Through the Curtain
by The Wolf's Lady Bluebird
Summary: The Eden Nightclub will make Eren's dreams come true - for better or for worse.
1. Paradise Found

Back when I could sleep, I should have spent more time doing it.

Naps used to be boring and a waste of time, and bedtime always killed my fun. I can't count the number of all-nighters I dragged myself through during high school. Up until about three weeks ago, sleep was always an afterthought. It wasn't important. I never had a night where I wasn't sure I'd be able to sleep if I tried. I should never have taken sleep for granted. Never.

I should have known better. I barely recall what Mom's laugh sounded like, and the only way I can see what she looked like is through Dad's pictures of her, but there's always been one thing about her that I knew for sure – Mom died because of fatal familial insomnia.

I had Armin look up the disease with me when we were kids. By the time I learned my multiplication tables, I was an expert on FFI. I could list off all the symptoms, the life expectancy, mortality rate, - all those cheerful facts and then some. I definitely knew that FFI was something you could get if your mom or dad had it. It occurred to me that maybe I had inherited Mom's unlucky genetics, but I hadn't seen how the disease worked. I knew what the symptoms were, and what it did to you, but I didn't see Mom lose her mind. Seeing words on paper is never as powerful as real life. FFI never registered as a threat when I was a kid.

That changed about two months ago. One sleepless night a week turned into two missed nights, and then three, and back down to one night, only for me to have a panic attack on kitchen floor. I think Dad already knew what was wrong when he drove me to the doctor, but he still turned as white as a sheet when the results of my test came back.

It's not clear how long I have to live. The average life expectancy after symptoms start to appear is eighteen months, but some people live for a few years. I'm already a rare case because of how young I am. Most people start developing symptoms in their forties. There might be other irregularities with my case. Who knows? Maybe I'll last a couple of years. All that's really for sure is that I'm still in phase one of FFI. The only thing that Stage One really has in store for me is that I'll be spending less and less time asleep. It sucks, but compared to what happens in the other three stages, it's benign.

Stage two is when I'll start to slowly lose my mind. In the meantime, I can look forwards to increasing insomnia, impaired focus, general fatigue, paranoia, panic attacks, emotional instability, temporary sleep deprivation psychosis, and countless worried looks at the dinner table.

Dad got me some medication prescribed for my insomnia, but so far, it hasn't helped at all. My pills just make me woozy and tired for a few hours without actually helping me fall asleep. I got frustrated with them and found a different medication, but that one didn't work either.

Staying home at night is torture. I can't stand lying in bed and being unable to sleep. No matter how many times I change positions or what tricks I try, there are some nights where I just won't fall asleep. I can't even be productive and get some work done because I'm usually too woozy to focus.

Tonight, I couldn't stand staying up with nothing to do. I made a million stupid typos on my bio paper and decided that I wouldn't be able to focus. No matter how many times I changed my position from my side to my back to my stomach, I couldn't sleep. I would go crazy if I spent one more night doing nothing, so I thought that the least I could do was get some fresh air. Sometimes you just need to get away from things, right? I hoped that after I went for a walk for a few hours, I could come back with a clear head and finally grab a few hours of rest.

I left the house with my brain on autopilot and without any clear sense of direction. I just wanted to get away from the quiet house and the sight of Dad asleep at the kitchen table with his face in his papers and pen ink on his fingers. I wanted to get away from everything. That was all that mattered.

Now that I've managed to get away from it all, I don't actually know how to get back.

I'm lost. Completely, utterly lost. After I left the house, I got caught up thinking about what Mikasa and Dad and Armin – or really, just what my friends were doing. I only just pulled myself out of my thoughts, and I have no idea where I am. I've never been in this part of the city before. All the buildings look the same, like big concrete squares without any windows. I don't see any bikes, trash cans, or signs of life at all, which is strange. There also aren't any street signs, which is _really_ strange. I can't imagine how people get around here if all the streets look exactly alike. Personally, I really can't tell whether or not I've just been wandering in circles for the past… I don't know how long. I can't find my watch on my wrist.

I shiver. The walk hasn't cleared my head or woken me up at all. The moon and stars are both such a bright white that it's hard to tell them apart, especially since they're so blurry around the edges. The cold air burns my lungs and settles in my bones, and I feel sore and dull. My head feels mushy, and my thoughts meld together and fall apart at the same time. They run away the moment I try to snatch them, and it's taking all of my concentration to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

Despite how barren this place is, I'd like to think someone lives here. Maybe someone can give me directions. I need to get home before Dad and Mikasa wake up and start to worry about where I am.

Somebody laughs.

It's a short, high laugh in the utter silence of the night. It takes me by surprise, and it's gone so suddenly that I wonder if I'm imagining things. I mean, I am going to start hallucinating eventually, and I haven't slept in two days –

The laugh comes again. This time it's longer, and I can make out that it's a woman's voice thick with glee.

There's somebody out there. I don't think that I'm dreaming. I can't be, since I never fell asleep in the first place. The laugh is either real, or it's a hallucination. I want to believe that it's not in my head.

I think the laugh came from the street off to my right. I turn down the road and quicken my pace, keeping an eye out for the source of the voice. The snow starts to pour down, and the soft flurries cake the ground. They muffle my steps as I pound down the streets. My breath clouds the air, _just like letting off steam_ , and I giggle a bit at the thought - Oh, crap. I forgot my jacket at home. Mikasa won't be happy if she finds out.

I haven't heard another laugh since the last one faded out, and I'm scared that I'm going to lose the trail when I catch a faint humming sound.

There's a low, persistent buzz in my ear. At first I think that it's my head messing with me, but the sound steadily becomes louder and louder. It feels like someone switched on the car radio and is turning up the volume. In fact, as the sound gets louder, I can definitely tell that it's music. A low, pulsing beat echoes through my ears and down the street. The music doesn't grow unbearably loud, but it makes my head ache, and I can barely hear myself think.

Between the laughter and the music, it seems like there's some kind of party going on. I don't know what kind of people would throw a party on a Tuesday night – or what kind of party they would throw – but I'm not going to think about it too much. I just want to find someone to ask for directions.

I chase the party through the streets, but I don't see any signs of people headed in the same direction. Nobody walks along the sidewalk, and I don't see any cars. I can hear the music just fine, but the laughter has disappeared, and I don't catch the sounds of voices or people moving around.

The streets curve and twist until I'm dizzy and they open up into a wide square that stops me in my tracks.

The buildings are replaced by a wall made of the same pale concrete. I don't see any windows or doors in the wall, just streetlamps around the edges of the square. The wall rings the square on three sides and stretches up to touch the sky. The square itself is empty except for the wide fountain rising out of the cobblestones. I'm amazed that nobody has turned the water off yet. It's December, and not only has the water not been turned off, but it hasn't frozen over. It spills from the mouth of a white marble stallion and splashes into the basin below.

I follow the music right to the far wall of the square, to the one wall that's grossly different from the others. It's been painted over into a bright mural.

The mural is one of animals – all of those that I can name off the top of my head right now, plus many that I can't. Lions bask in the sun with lambs. A horse drinks from a pool with a crocodile – or an alligator, but I think it's a crocodile? – right by its eyes. I'm pretty sure that scaly thing in the trees is a dragon. They're all surrounded by flowers that are too fantastical to be real plants.

I have to get close enough to the animals to cloud them with my breath to make sure they aren't real. It might be that I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes where I want them to be, or that they're painted so vividly, but I swear that the tiger blinked. The shades used for the leopard's fur are so spot-on (pun not intended) that I'm amazed it's not real fur. No matter how elaborate the bird's feathers are, the blending of hues and shades is perfect.

I almost miss the words painted on the dove's wing, and I can barely make out the cursive lettering.

 _EDEN_.

The name sends a shiver down my spine.

My breath quickens, and I press my hand against the wall. I can feel the vibrations of the music through the concrete. The party is definitely behind the wall. The only problem is that I can't see any way to get to the music. The wall doesn't have any door, and it's built high enough to touch the sliver of waning moon hanging in the sky. I can't climb over it unless I want to break my neck.

"Oi, Brat," A voice snaps behind me. I jump. "Are you going to go in or what? You're blocking the entrance, and its fucking cold out."

The man behind me is all sharp edges. Piercing grey eyes scowl out at me from under a crisp black undercut. He stands with his coat pulled tightly around himself and his hands buried in his pockets to ward off the cold.

I'm glad to see another human being, but his sudden appearance, and the words coming out of his mouth, throw me off a bit. "Entrance?" I echo his words and frown at the wall. "You mean right here?" I don't see any door, let alone a doorknob or a button.

The man peers up at me incredulously. "You don't know how to get in? Don't tell me that you've never visited Eden before."

I shake my head. The man's response makes me uneasy. It seems like he expects me to know what I'm doing, and I feel like I've been left out of the loop or forgotten something important.

He sighs and curses lowly. "Perfect. Is there any chance that you're going to leave if I tell you to fuck off?" He asks.

The irritation in his voice sets me off. "What was that for?" I demand, crossing my arms over my chest. "I'm pretty cold and tired myself, but I'm not telling anyone to go fuck off. Do you have a problem with me or something?"

"I have a problem with brats who waste my time," He snaps. "Just answer the question."

I'm sorely tempted to say something along the lines of, _"Not until you answer my question,"_ , but he has a point. Arguing won't get either of us over the wall any faster, and it certainly won't change the fact that he's an asshole. Instead of a quip, I tell him, "I'm not going anywhere." I wanted to know what's over the wall before he appeared, but now that he's acting like I should know what I'm doing, he's hardened my resolve.

"Then I have to give you the orientation speech. Pay attention," He says, "because I'm only going to explain this once."

I nod, but he doesn't wait for me to confirm anything before he continues.

"Through that wall – " He gestures towards the mural – "Is Eden. That's easy enough. I'm from the other side of Eden."

Okay. I'm not sure where he's going with this. I got the impression that he was going to explain Eden, not give me his address. "I really don't need to know where you live." I assure him.

"You do," He says. There's no teasing glint in his eye. He's completely serious. "Eden is a nightclub, and you can get in if you want to. You can do whatever the fuck you want. If you do go in, though, you're going to see a lot of people who come from the same place I do. We're from the Other Side."

The capitals are obvious from the way he says the words. He speaks with a certain reverence, even though I don't think he's consciously doing it. It's still not clear why he's telling me any of this, though. "What's so special about living by the nightclub?" The noise must be awful at night, sure, but there's no reason why I would have to know that.

"I'm getting to that," He says impatiently. "Here, Brat – Eden isn't a normal nightclub. Very few of the people in it are normal, and none of the people living around it are anything close to normal. I don't mean that they aren't right in the head. Some of them are pretty fucked up, but it's more than that. They're not human."

I study the man more closely. If he's also from the Other side, then that means he's including himself in that statement. For someone who isn't human, he sure looks exactly like one. His pale cheeks are flushed with the cold, and there's a deep furrow in his brow. Granted, I don't know what he means by 'not human', but he doesn't have glowing red eyes or anything like that.

He believes what he's saying, but that doesn't make it real. I hope he isn't a crazy person or something my brain cooked up. I'll humor him. I don't want to spend too much time thinking about what's real and what's false. "So Eden is filled with…? What? Superhuman beings? Monsters?"

"Dreams," He says curtly. "The Other Side isn't just a place on the other side of Eden, Brat. It's an entirely different world. There's Your Side, where humans live, and there's the Other Side, where dreams live. Eden is the no-man's land in the middle." He pauses for a minute before continuing. "It's a bridge. Humans and dreams can both come to Eden. They can meet each other. Talk, dance, whatever they want."

I have to seize every word coming out of his mouth before it gets lost in my jumbled head. "You're saying that in Eden, dreams are real?"

"Dreams are always real," He corrects me. "They're tangible in Eden."

"All dreams?" He's only mentioned people, but not everybody dreams about human beings. I know that I don't.

"All dreams are tangible in Eden," He agrees. "But not every dream goes to the club."

"What about dreams of objects?" I ask. All of my dreams are about objects. All I want is that one vial, that one syringe, that one bottle of pills – hell, I'd even settle for a recipe on a post-it note. All I want is the object that can cure me.

"I said all dreams, didn't I?" He says. He checks his watch. "That's all I have to say. Brat, if you want to go in, you have to go soon. Eden isn't open forever."

"One last question," I promise. "Can you take dreams from Eden and bring them into the real world?" If I do find my cure, I don't want to keep it in the club. It's mine. I'm going to bring it home, and I'll learn to replicate it so I can share the medication.

He frowns. "That depends,"

"On what?"

"Some dreams don't become real just because you've found them. Some dreams come true the moment you grab them," He glances pointedly over my shoulder to the painted wall. "I have to go. Come with me or stay, whatever you decide after hearing all that. Just choose quickly."

This – me, standing here in the square – is real. Either he's crazy, all of this is in my head, or he's telling the truth. I'm not sure which of those options is correct. Since I was diagnosed, my life has gone a little crazy. It's hard for me to accept that my condition is real. My symptoms just started appearing out of the blue, and someone telling you you're going to stop sleeping and die doesn't sound any more real than this conversation. If the man isn't crazy, then the idea of dreams living in another dimension and turning into people isn't the most surreal thing I've ever heard. On the other hand, I won't be surprised if this whole night is a dream. All of my dreams are fantastical.

I'm not going to walk away from this. I'm not going to call this conversation a figment of my imagination, and I'm not going to label it as the product of this man's scrambled mind. I'm being given an opportunity to find a cure and escape this hellish disease before it gets any worse. I'm not going to turn my back on that.

"I'll come in," I decide.

The man steps around me and feels along the wall. His hand dips into a groove that I didn't notice when I inspected the mural. I thought it was a thick, dark streak to define the dove's wing, but it's clear that I was wrong when he pushes down and the wall starts to rumble.

Nothing in the wall slides away. It's not like the secret passages in movies. One second the wall is intact, and the next, part of it falls away to reveal the entrance. The entrance to Eden is a huge, ragged tunnel cut into the wall. Looking down into the maw of the tunnel, I can't see anything on the other end. Just solid black.

The man steps into the tunnel. Without turning around, he says, "Let's go, Brat. We've already killed too much time."

I hurry after him into the dark.

The moment I step into the mouth of the tunnel, the pounding in my head fades and I become acutely aware of the cold, smooth stone under my feet. It's hard to describe, but being in the tunnel feels like standing in the mouth of a creature holding its breath. Everything goes still the second I step in, and the roar of the music I heard outside abruptly cuts off. The air in the tunnel is colder than the outside air, and it burns my lungs more, but my breath doesn't create misty clouds when I exhale. Every time I try to suck in a breath, something in my chest protests with a sharp pain until all I can do is gasp for air. The man walking in front of me seems unaffected.

The pain continues to build in my chest, and gritting my teeth isn't helping. A pained gasp escapes my throat.

The man stops and turns back to watch me. "Take it easy, Brat. Don't kill yourself." His low voice echoes through the tunnel. He's an inky silhouette in the darkness, but his grey eye glow like pale stars.

"How –" I gasp out. A sharp stab of pain laces through my chest – "How are you not affected?"

"Dreams are just different from humans. You have physical bodies. We don't. When you enter Eden, your bodies have to change in order to interact with ours." His shoulders rise and fall in a dismissive shrug. "That's all I know. I'm not a fucking doctor, so don't ask me to be more specific."

I know that he said he was a dream, and after seeing the entrance to the club appear, I think I believe him, but it's hard to wrap my head around. I don't know what I expected a dream to look like, let alone what one would act like, but he's not what I imagined. He's pretty… actually, I don't know how to describe him. Normal? No, he's not normal. Lifelike? That makes him sound like he's made out of plastic.

Real. He's just… talking to him feels real.

"My name is Eren," I supply. He didn't ask, but we haven't introduced ourselves and it would feel strange not to.

"Levi," He replies. He turns his head to address me. "We're here."

The tunnel has a feeling of limbo that makes it seem to last forever until it suddenly doesn't. I don't even see any light at the end before I'm hit by a blast of noise and heat. I follow Levi into the club and wince at the bring lights flashing around me. The pain in my chest immediately eases up, and I gratefully suck in huge gasps of air. Between the lights and the pounding bodies, I'm starting to warm up. I'm glad that I didn't wear a jacket. If I had, I would already be too hot in Eden.

The club is spherical, with steps leading down from the entrance of the tunnel onto a dance floor at the very bottom of the club. Animal heads carved into the – not black granite, it's more like black glass – spew fountains of water down into a pool looping around the dance floor like a moat. Around the sides of the sphere, a glass walkway spirals up to the top of a crystal dome where the DJ holds court. Glass platforms ringing the walls, connected by more arching glass walkways, are furnished by tables and several bars. Eden smells like snow; crisp, and airy with a touch of stone.

The light in the club – the strobe lights illuminate the dance floor, but those pinks and blues don't reach the upper levels of the dome. Those areas are lit by the huge moon that shines through the dome. It almost blocks out the rest of the sky. That's not possible. This moon isn't a sliver, like I'm sure the one tonight is. This moon is a titan. I know that the Other Side is a different world, but is Eden already a twisted reality?

I forget that Levi is next to me until his voice reverberates in my ear. "Brat, pick your jaw up off the floor before something nasty lands in it. And stop blocking the entrance." Somehow, I'm able to hear Levi's voice over the pounding bass. The music was loud on the outside of the club, and inside Eden, it's almost unbearable. It's loud enough to work its way into my bones and force me to breathe in time to the frantic rhythm.

I step away from the entrance and scan the club. It's huge, and it's going to be a challenge to find my dream in the press of people. "What would you do if you're looking for a specific dream?" I ask Levi.

Levi frowns. "The same things you would do if you wanted a specific person. You try to spot them. You ask around."

"Is there anywhere here where I can find medicine?" I ask hopefully.

Levi shakes his head. "All the drugs here are either illegal or drugs someone dreamed up that would probably still be illegal if the cops knew about them. There's nothing here for a sore throat or a runny nose." Levi still hasn't taken his jacket off, and I can't believe he isn't roasting alive in it. There's no way he's still cold.

"What if I dreamed up the medicine?" I persist. "Then it would be here."

"Brat, I said earlier that not all dreams come to Eden," He's not looking at me while he speaks. Instead, his eyes scan the crowd below us from his place against the wall. "Most of the dreams here are the ones that can move by themselves. The objects tend to stay on the Other Side."

A nervous shiver laces down my spine. "Can humans get to the Other Side?" It would be a cruel joke if the one dream I wanted was out of reach.

Levi's eyes fly to me. "Yes but no."

I blink "What do you mean?"

"Yes, humans can go through, and no, I'm not going to take you to the Other Side."

I'm not going to deny it. "Am I that obvious?" I try instead with a small smile.

He snorts. "Brat, you're an open book." More seriously, he adds, "I don't care why you want to go through. It's a bad idea. Not all dreams are fantasies, and the Other Side isn't a world where unicorns dance on rainbows and shit out cotton candy. Half of the dreams in this club would eat you alive the first chance they got, and most of the other half wouldn't try to stop them. There are nightmares out there, brat, and they're pretty fucking nasty. The monster under your bed that made you piss yourself when you were a kid? That thing's not just in your head anymore. It's out here, in the real world."

I'm not impressed. I live with a nightmare every day, and it's scarier than the monster under my bed ever was. That monster never kept my dad up all night searching for a cure or made my sister sick with worry. The monster under my bed kept me up at night, but not for days at a time. It never threatened to turn me into a vegetable. "I need to find my dream to live." I say.

The furrows in Levi's brow deepen. "You're sick." It's not a question. "That's why you're asking about medicine."

"I got diagnosed with fatal familial insomnia in October," I explain. "It's turned life into hell for my family and me. If I have any chance to fix that, I'll take it. Honestly," I add, "Without the cure, I'm going to die. "Getting eaten alive by a nightmare doesn't scare me. If I fail to find a cure, then I'll die. If I don't try, I'll still die. The only way I can go is forwards. And right now, that means going to the Other Side.

Levi still doesn't say anything. He's just staring at me and frowning, but it's not a disapproving frown or anything like that. He just looks like he's contemplating. "If you won't help me," I try, "then I'll find someone else who will. I'll go through myself if I have to."

His face immediately breaks into a snarl. "Don't be stupid, Brat."

"So you will take me?" I ask.

Levi sighs. "Fucking shit, Brat, you're really never going to stop are you?"

"Is that a yes?" Instead of answering, Levi turns and strides through the crowd. I hurry after him. He has no problem elbowing people and pushing them when they don't move out of his way. I murmur "Sorry, sorry." to them as we pass by.

Levi walks fast for such a short man. I almost have to jog to keep up with his long strides. If we weren't moving through the crowd so quickly, I would probably stop and stare at the people in Eden.

Some of them look perfectly normal, and I wonder if they're dreams or humans. Most of the partygoers are obviously not human. I catch sight of a few men with horns, and there's a woman with nine tails. One woman looks perfectly normal until I see the other side of her face, where the skin peels away and reveals the ragged muscle and bone underneath. She watches me from her table with cold, hungry black eyes until the crowd swallows me up.

I don't know what I expected from the gate to the Other Side, but it wasn't the huge set of gold-embossed double doors rising up before me. Levi stops in front of them so suddenly that I barely avoid running into him.

The doors swing open easily, without a sound, and I'm struck by the feeling that this whole night is surreal. My talk with Levi about dreams outside Eden didn't exactly feel unreal, but I don't understand the concept. I've just accepted it. I'm standing in the club right now, so it's all real. He's not crazy. Not delusional. Maybe I made him up. Maybe this is a dream. In dreams, you don't know that your world isn't real. Maybe this _is_ reality because when you're in a dream, you don't think about what is and isn't real. Maybe this is a lucid dream, and I am dreaming, but I'm also aware of what's going on.

I can't decide. Reality and dream are too closely intertwined in Eden for me to be able to guess what's in my head and what's outside of it. I take a deep breath and try to clear my thoughts. There's no point trying to puzzle over the nature of the club. Levi is waiting for me at the edge of the tunnel, and I can't leave him there.

Peering over Levi's shoulder and into the tunnel to the Other Side, I don't see a single glimmer of light at the end. It reminds me of the tunnel to Eden, except that the first tunnel didn't have any shadows.

I step inside, and Levi lets the doors swing closed behind us. They close without a sound, and an invisible light switches on the moment they shut. It's like someone turned on an overhead light, except there's no clear source of the brightness. It just illuminates a narrow path through the tunnel.

"Stay behind me," Levi's voice is low and doesn't echo in the tunnel. "Stay on the path, otherwise they'll catch you."

"They?" I ask.

Levi nods to the sides of the path.

The shadows along the paths are moving, weaving together and scraping at the edge of the light's reach.

"What are they?" I whisper. There's something slimy and oily about the way the shadows drip over the ground. My stomach twists and I take a step closer to Levi.

"They're just shadows of old dreams."

"Can they hurt you?"

"I don't want to find out. Nothing hat disgusting is going to touch my skin." Levi glances back at me. "You wanted to get to the Other Side, Brat. We need to get a move on if we want to make it in time."

"What do you mean, in time?" I ask.

He keeps his eyes firmly ahead as he answers. "When it's night on the Other Side, time stands still on Your Side. When our sun rises, time starts moving forwards again in your world." He shrugs his wide shoulders. "I don't know exactly how it works, but it means that humans can't be on our side during the day. The differences between the world they're tethered to and the world they're in kills them."

"Oh," I say.

We're quiet for a while after that, but I don't want to spend the trip in silence with the oozing shadows. "Hey, Levi." I ask. "What kind of dream are you?"

He doesn't answer for a moment, and his shadow curls over the walls of the tunnel.

"I don't know," He finally says. "I'm a dream, Brat. That's all that matters."

"What kind of dreams are there?" I ask.

"Fantasies and nightmares. There are dreams that are in between those two, and we call them imperfect. If they're more fantasy than nightmare, they're imperfect fantasies. If it's the other way around, then they're imperfect nightmares. But dreams are subjective, Brat. One dreamer's nightmare could be his enemy's fantasy."

I turn that over in my head. "Do you know who your dreamer is?"

"No. Dreams don't have some sort of instant connection when we meet our dreamers. Most of us don't meet our dreamers in the first place,"

That seems like a lonely existence. I can't imagine never knowing anything about who made me or who I am. It's a sobering thought, and it shuts me up for the rest of the trip.

The path is perfectly straight, but I don't see the door until we're right in front of it.

"Do everything I say," Levi instructs me. "Don't eat anything or drink anything that I don't say is safe. Even if you see me eat it, don't copy me. Don't touch anything that I don't say isn't okay to touch." He keeps eye contact with me, staring me down until I'm squirming and nodding under his gaze.

The doors swing open with a deep groan that shakes the corridor and makes the shadows quiver like nasty Jell-O.

We stand in the middle of a field. Tall, thick grass eddies around my waste. Above us, the sky glows with the same titanous moon we saw in the club, and now it's accompanied by a sea of stars.

The colors are incredibly vivid, as if somebody colored in the world with dark blue and green markers. A flash of silent lightning arcs down onto a spot in the distance.

This world is alive. It's not the lightning that makes my pulse race and eyes devour everything around me. The wind whips at my hair, pulling me forwards even as the grass tangled around my feet and tries to keep me in place. The world has the same smell as the air does before a thunderstorm, like rain and something beginning to burn. When I inhale, the scent makes me feel like the world is holding its breath.

I forget that Levi is here with me until another bolt of lightning, this one closer than the last, illuminates him. He just stands in the grass and watches me with a perfectly still face.

As far as I can see, this world is just a rolling plain of grass. Worry twists in my stomach. This can't be it. A world made of dreams can't just be a field. There has to be cities with impossible architecture. This world needs to be filled with all the dragons and monsters that little kids dream up. There's no way I can find a cure when it's buried in an endless sea of grass.

Levi's voice shakes me out of my thoughts. "You look like someone killed your puppy, Brat." He observes.

I turn to him. "Is this all there is?" I ask nervously. "Is the Other Side just this plain?"

To my relief, he shakes his head. "I'm not going to throw a new dreamer into the most interesting parts of the Other Side. You wouldn't last thirty seconds if I brought you to them tonight. This is a good part of the world for beginners. It's quiet. There's no chance of you making a mess."

I'm glad that a cure is still a possibility, but I want to find it sooner than later. I also want to see these most interesting part of the Other Side. "Can I come back here a second time?" I ask.

Levi doesn't answer for a minute.

"I can't stop you from trying to come through by yourself. Brats like you don't know what they're getting themselves into when they try to do that. It kills them. I'm not going to be responsible for anybody dying because I showed them too much of something they weren't ready for. I'll take you back through sometime."

I'm weirdly touched by his statement, but there's still one question I don't have the answer to. If I want to come back through the gate a second time, I have to find Eden a second time. "How will I find my way back to the club? I don't remember how I got here in the first place."

"Dreamers can find their way back," Levi said. "I don't know how it works, but they always find their way back to Eden."

Suddenly, his jaw clenches, and his gaze locks on something over my shoulder.

I turn to follow his gaze, and my stomach drops when I see the unmistakable glow of the rising sun.

Levi snatches my arm in a vicelike grip. "You have to go,"

I stumble behind him as he steers me towards the gate. "Already?" I ask breathlessly. "We only just got here!" I barely got a chance to look at this world, let alone explore it.

"The tunnel accelerates time,"

We race through the grass towards the gate. Levi's expression is grim as he pulls me across the plain. Normally, I would protest against someone steering me, but I could use the help right now. I have no idea which was is the correct one back to the gate, and if we don't make it, the sun will kill me.

This is the first time I've touched him. His hands are burning hot. He still hasn't taken his jacket off, though.

The gate rises out of the plain, and I plow through the grass towards it. The doors seem a little strange just standing there in the grass without a wall to be set in, but I'm sort of happy that something out here looks as unreal as I expected it to be.

The doors squeal in protest when Levi throws them over, and we dart down the tunnel. Neither of us pay attention to the shadows along the walls. I just try to follow his feet.

I'm panting and still flooded with adrenaline when we burst back into Eden. At the same time, a gong sounds, and the doors, which were in the process of closing behind us, swing wide open once more. The music cuts off, but the silence doesn't last long. Calls of disappointment and goodbye bounce of the side of the spherical club, and Levi has to pull me into a corner to avoid the press of dreams that begin filtering back through the gate.

I glance up at Levi. "Do you have to go?" I ask.

He nods once.

"You'll take me through again, though," I ask, just to make sure.

"I already said I would," He says.

"Promise," I insist. "Promise that you'll take me back through."

Levi rolls his eyes. "What are you, three? I promise. Now come on, Brat. Both of us have to go home."

With that Levi turns to step into the crowd filtering through the gate.

"Wait!" I snatch his arm. "How will I get home?"

He blinks. "Just get outside the club."

Before I can demand a better answer, he shakes off my hand and slips into the throng of dreams. I'm knocked a side by the tide of bodies and lose sight of him instantly.

For a moment, I just stand there and watch the crowd leave through the gate.

That's it. He never said goodbye. Even the words he left behind aren't very helpful. _"Just get outside the club."_ That doesn't explain anything.

Then again, he promised that he'd take me to the Other Side again. Maybe he doesn't want to say goodbye because none of this is final. I hope that's it.

It takes a lot of effort to turn away from the gate and head home.


	2. the Flower and the Butterfly

**So, I have to thank everybody so much for all the early feedback and support I've received. You guy are awesome, and your support is the reason I'm posting this chapter.**

 **In all seriousness, I'm not super happy with this chapter. I knew what I wanted to happen, but writing it out made it look so... I don't know. Boring? Mundane? Something like that. I'm not happy with the way it turned out and I had a hard time writing it, but I think it's a chapter that has to exist. It's mostly about Eren's family and the aftermath of his first taste of the Other Side. My biggest issue with it is that Levi isn't here (in person), but don't worry - he'll be back next chapter, and then the ereri will start to happen and stuff. I promise.**

 **But Izzy does pop in for this chapter, so that's good?**

A pillow cushions my head and a down blanket cocoons my body. Above me, sunlight shines through the open window and paints the fan's shadow onto the ceiling.

Normally, I don't think about much of anything right after I wake up. It takes me a moment to start functioning. Then all I can think about is what might happen in the day ahead.

This morning, my first thought of the day is _no._

Last night, I met a dream – several dreams, actually – and learned that I might have a chance against my FFI. I ended up in another dimension. The whole time, I wondered whether or not Eden was real, or if my brain was just cooking up everything I saw. Eden offered me a possible cure, and I desperately hoped that the opportunity was real.

Waking up in my own bed makes it far more likely that everything was just a cruel dream.

Last night, after Levi left and Eden emptied out, I just stepped outside the club and prayed that I could retrace my steps back home. I'm home now, but I don't remember walking back through the snow.

 _The snow!_ I bolt out of bed and swing the window open. The moment I stick my head outside, my heart drops. The morning sun shines down on our yard, where Mom's rose garden – Dad started to take care of it after she died, but lately he's neglected it – bursts with reds and whites blossoms in full bloom. Dew glistens on the roses climbing up the wall by my window, but there isn't a single snowflake on the petals. The lush grass

I sink back onto the bed. It definitely snowed outside of Eden last night. The snowflakes got all over my arms and in my hair.

I don't want Eden to be a dream. I don't care that I got some sleep if it means that everything that happened last night was a fantasy. I had a cure close enough to taste, but now it looks like it was never there to begin with.

I bury my face in my hands. God, I was so happy. So ready to be healthy again. Levi was going to take me to the Other Side for a cure. A tear slips down my cheek, and I wipe it away angrily (Why am I crying? It`s… yeah it's not good that Eden might not be real but there's no reason to _cry)_.

There's a gentle knock on my door. "Eren?" Mikasa calls. "Are you awake?"

When I don't answer, Mikasa lets herself in. "Eren?" She asks, with alarm, behind me. "Are you okay?"

I turn to look at my older sister standing in the doorway. She's wearing an apron over her clothes, and when she sees my face, she produces a tissue from one of the apron pockets and hurries over. "What's wrong?" She asks as she reaches out to wipe my face. "Were you up all night?" Mikasa bites her lip worriedly. "I'm sorry."

I duck away from the hand wielding the Kleenex and pull the tissue away from it instead. Mikasa has always acted like the mother of the house, but I think she forgets that I'm not a little kid anymore. I can wipe my own face. "I'm fine," I insist.

"You're crying," She points out.

I wipe my face with the tissue to get rid of any lingering tears. "No, I'm not." Softening my tone, I add, "Thanks, but you don't need to worry. I just had a really lifelike dream, that's all."

I don't know if Mikasa buys it, but my explanation seems to relieve her a bit. She smiles softly. "So you did get some sleep? I'm glad."

"Yeah, me too." If Eden was just a dream, then I think it would have been better that I'd never fallen asleep in the first place. "I think I got a lot of sleep, actually."

Mikasa rests one hand lightly on my shoulder. "That's great, Eren. I have to get back downstairs, but come down soon, okay? I made breakfast."

"I'll be down in a minute," I promise. First, I need to clean up.

Mikasa goes back downstairs, and I go over to the bathroom. My bathroom is actually connected to my room, so I don't need to go across the hall or anything to get to it – just though the door by my closet. That might sound great, but the only reason I have it because of my FFI. If I didn't have an adjoining bathroom, I'd have to use the one downstairs, and I might wake the others up when I used the downstairs bathroom in the middle of the night.

In the bathroom, I splash come cold water on my face and brush my teeth. While I'm busy rinsing my mouth and cringing ( _Why does mint and cold water have to give my mouth that feeling?)_ , my mind wanders back to Eden. I can't believe that the whole thing was just a dream.

Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and have to find a way to kill time for a few hours until I fall back asleep. When I wake up on the mornings after those nights, the time I spent awake always feels dreamlike and sort of vague. Everything I did before I fell back asleep seems foggy and blurry. The more I think about it, the more I always wonder if I woke up in the first place or if my time awake was a vivid dream.

Eden feels the same way. I want to say that I was awake, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I dreamt the whole thing.

I check myself over in the mirror. It definitely looks like I slept last night. The bags under my eyes haven't disappeared, but they're definitely a lot smaller than they were yesterday morning. There's also some color in my cheeks.

My hair is a mess, but that isn't anything new. Every day, I try to tame it with a wet comb, and every day, I fail miserably. At least it appeases Mikasa. I don't think I'll change before breakfast. I don't think my sweatpants and tee are that gross or offensive, and they're comfortable.

Just as I'm about to turn away from the mirror, something glitters gold on my collarbone.

I immediately turn back to my reflection. I pull down my collar to get a closer look, and my heart stops when I see the gold tattoo spread over my collarbone.

I don't have a tattoo. I've never gotten one. I thought about it once, but Armin stopped me before I could go through with my plan of getting a smiley face tattooed on my ass.

There's unmistakably a gold lily covering my collarbone and most of my shoulder. I tentatively touch the inked skin. It's not sore at all. It doesn't look like a new tattoo, but I know I didn't have it last night. Mikasa definitely would have noticed. That being said, there's no way it could have just spontaneously appeared.

It has something to do with Eden. That's the only explanation I can think of. The thought excites me. Eden is full of crazy things, so it's possible that the tattoo is another part of its general wackiness. Of course, that doesn't really explain where I got the tattoo. Nobody offered me one while I was at the club, and Levi never mentioned anything about tattoos.

If the tattoo is real, and it is from Eden, then Eden has to be real. On the other hand, I woke up in my bed this morning without a speck of snow on the ground. When I looked out the window this morning, it had never seemed so likely that Eden was one of my dreams.

I take a deep breath. I can't help but wonder about Eden, but there's nothing I can do right now. Mikasa and Dad will be wondering where I am. I quickly change into jeans and a turtleneck that will hide the flower before hurrying down the stairs and into the kitchen.

The moment I step inside the kitchen, I'm hit by a blast of warm air and the doughy, sweet smell of pancake batter. Mikasa and Dad are already seated and waiting for me when I come in, their plates full but untouched.

"Don't run down the stairs," Mikasa chides. "It would be easy to fall."

"Sorry," I slide into my seat and help myself to some pancakes with a small ocean of syrup. I don't cut my pancake stack so much as tear a chunk off and eagerly shove it into my mouth. I shut my eyes as the flavor bursts in my mouth and let out an appreciative "mmmmmm." Mikasa is an incredible chef, no matter what she's cooking.

I stuff another cube of pancake into my mouth and turn to watch Dad. My stomach twinges. He looks horrible. The bags under my eyes have never been as big as the bags he has now. He's gone through a couple mugs of coffee already, but it's not keeping his eyelids from sinking lower and lower. "Don't tell me you stayed up last night," I say.

He shakes his head. "I fell asleep. Did you sleep at all?"

"Yeah, I slept for a while," I throw some powdered sugar onto the pancakes for good measure. Dad manages to crack a weary smile. "Good. Do you feel rested?"

I shrug. "Yeah, I feel fine." How I feel is the last thing on my mind this morning, but now that I think about it, I'm not sore or sluggish the way I usually am in the mornings. I feel solid. Awake. "Did you… did you find anything last night? Did you make any progress?"

Dad shakes his head. Mikasa's eyes fall down to her plate.

Dad works for the city hospital. He met mom when she came in to get her genes tested, and then he tried to treat her when she got sick. He never found a treatment, let alone a cure, but now he's trying to cure me. He's working himself to the bone. I tell him over and over again not to try so hard, but he never listens.

"Are you going to go to class today?" Dad speaks up.

I frown, a forkful of pancake halfway to my mouth. "I want to, but can I still get to class? What time is it?"

Dad checks his watch. The telltale blue-black of pen ink smears his fingertips. "Your biology class starts at eleven. It's nine thirty-seven now. The next bus comes at ten, so you could probably make it."

Mikasa glances at me over her orange juice. "You should hurry up and go. It's fifteen minutes to the bus stop."

I shovel down a few more bites and pull my sneakers and a jacket. "Take care of yourself!" Mikasa calls as I close the front door.

I hurry down the sidewalk to the bus stop. I'm eager to go to class rested, since I can never remember or process anything when I haven't slept. It might be hard to catch up, but that's okay. Armin sent me the class notes, so those will help.

I make it to the bus stop without a moment to spare and settle down into a seat on the back of the bus. It's about a twenty-minute ride to the university, so I pull out my headphones and settle against the window.

Eden. I should be thinking about school, but my thoughts linger on the nightclub. I can't stop thinking about that titan of a moon and the painted wall. My brain keeps circling back to grey eyes and black hair.

I sigh and force the thoughts out of my head. It'll be the first time this week that I can go to class. I went every day last week, but man, it's impossible to take notes when you're too tired to think.

All of my notes look like something a toddler scribbled. My grades have been plummeting ever since I started showing symptoms, but I need to pass biology as a pre-med coursework requirement.

The seat shifts as someone sits down beside me, and a girl's voice chimes, "Hey, are you Eren?"

I turn around to see what she wants, but my vocal cords close up when my eyes land on the girl sitting next to me.

Her emerald eyes gleam even in the full daylight, and the sun reflects off of the silver butterfly inked over her jaw and the right side of her face. Scarlet hair falls around her face in a scruffy mane.

There are wings on her back. Real, velvety butterfly wings bent in on themselves against the seat.

"Does that hurt?" I blurt out. I saw stranger things than this girl at Eden last night, but we're not in the club now. Levi said that dreams can't manifest on my side of the club, so what is she?

She blinks. "What, this?" As I watch, she grabs a piece of her wing and rolls it up before pressing it flat in her palm. I wince. "Nah, they're too durable." She releases the wing and it unfurls back into its original shape. "See?" The girl offers me one hand. "I'm Isabel Magnolia. You're Eren, right?"

I nod and hesitantly shake her hand. She's definitely real. Eden's wall was real, too, and so was Levi. "Are you a dream?" I ask.

"Sort of, yeah." Isabel shrugs. "I'm a daydream. I'm weaker than the fantasies or the nightmares or the imperfects, but it's okay because I can leave Eden. Even though I can only be on your side during the day." She flashes me a quick grin. "It's cool that I get to see you. I wouldn't be able to find you in Eden."

I frown. "Have you been looking for me?"

Isabel nods. "You met my older brother last night, and he thought that you might not be doing too well this morning." Her expression darkens. "Eden isn't always kind to dreamers."

Before I can ask Isabel what she means, a woman seated across the aisle speaks up. "Honey, could you please keep it down?"

"What?" I glance up at the elderly woman frowning at me. "Me?"

"Yes, you. I'm sorry if you're not feeling well, but could you keep it down?"

"I…" What is she talking about? I don't think Isabel and I were speaking that loudly.

"Oh," Isabel breathes. Her eyes widen. "Oh shit, I completely forgot." She turns to me. "They can't see me, Eren."

My face flushes as the pieces click into place. She thinks that I'm talking to myself. "Oh, no! I'm not…." My voice trails off. The woman fixes me with a frown that can't decide whether it wants to be pitying or exasperated. All around me on the bus, people are trying very hard not to look at me.

They think I'm crazy.

I glance out the window. We still have a few more stops until the bus reaches campus. Great.

The old lady frowns at me for the rest of the ride while Isabel periodically murmurs "Sorry." I grit my teeth.

It makes sense that I'm the only one who can see Isabel. Of course nobody else can see her, or they would have said something about the girl with wings. I should have thought of that.

I burst out of the bus the moment it stops on campus, with Isabel hot on my heels. I still have some time before class starts, so I pull Isabel over to a secluded bench to continue our conversation.

"Okay," I say as we sit down, "what do you mean, Eden isn't always kind to dreamers?" Isabel's appearance proves that I didn't dream Eden up. I still don't understand why I woke up in my own bed, but it doesn't really matter. I still have a chance of finding a cure, and that's all that really matters.

Isabel grimaces. "You know how humans eat food, right? You need to survive. Dreams eat too, but we can't get any nutrition from salad or hot dogs. We need dreamers instead."

"The only reason dreams exist is because a dreamer made them, right?" Isabel continues. "Long story short, there's a hierarchy of dreams. Fulfilled dreams are the strongest dreams since they get the most attention from their dreamers. Forgotten dreams are the least powerful." Isabel frowns. "Forgotten dreams usually die."

"Anyways, a dream's position can change pretty quickly depending on how much attention it gets. Eden helps bring dreams and dreamers closer together and puts dreams right in front of dreamers' faces. It makes it hard for dreamers not to pay attention to us, and we get to feast. It also makes it easy for dreams that aren't doing so well to get something to eat. We don't feed off of you consciously. It's like breathing for you guys – we do it automatically. It's a survival mechanism. Sometimes we take a lot from our dreamers and it hurts them." Isabel fiddled with a loose screw on the bench. "That's not really the most dangerous part, though. Dreams also try to addict dreamers. It's so we can have a reliable food source or something like that. Basically we mess with your brain chemistry and your… what is it? The stuff your brain has when you get a reward?"

"Dopamine?" I supply.

"Yeah, dopamine. We mess with your dopamine until you're addicted to us." Isabel looks up at me guiltily. "We can't help it, but it's a big problem for dreamers."

"I'm not mad at you or anything," I assure her. "You can't help it." I'm okay with dreams feeding off me, as long as they only do it because they have to.

"It's still dangerous for you,"

I laugh it off. "Worse things could happen."

"I guess," Isabel leans back on the bench and studies me. "I volunteered to come after you because Levi was worried that going to the Other Side took a lot out of you. You spent a lot of time with him and you went through the doors, so he thought that you might already start getting hooked." Her eyes fall to me neck. "It definitely looks like Eden attached itself to you."

I glance down to my neck and realize with a jolt that my tattoo is uncovered. I quickly rearrange the collar and ask Isabel, "Did Eden give me a tattoo or something?"

"Yep," Isabel replies. "Eden likes to brand the dreamers that visit it."

"That doesn't make any sense," I complain. "It's inconvenient, and no dream is going to see it when I'm on my side. Except for daydreams," I amend. "And I don't know how much it really matters inside Eden."

"It doesn't do much," Isabel agrees. "Maybe it has some identification purpose? If I didn't see that tattoo, it would have been harder to find you." She looks me over. "Levi wasn't sure what going to the other side would do to a dreamer, but you seem to be doing alright. You're not obsessing over Eden, are you? Compelled to run to your nearest wall?"

I laugh. "I've been thinking about Eden a lot, but only because it's such a new idea, right? I never thought that I would be able to touch dreams."

Isabel nods. "It's weird to think about how dreamers never really think much about their dreams as people, even though we think about our dreamers as people all the time. You don't know our world exists, but we know all about yours."

"Speaking of which," Isabel adds, you came here for a college class, right? Shouldn't you go?"

I check my watch and scramble to my feet. Crap, she's right – class starts in five minutes. "

"Gotta go?" Isabel chirps from the bench.

"Yeah," I turn back to her sheepishly. "You don't want to wait for me out here."

Isabel waves a hand. "I can find my way back home. Just go."

I go.

"Hey Eren!" Armin beams as I slide into my seat next to him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I assure him. "Hey, thanks for the notes. I looked the over earlier, so hopefully they'll help me out."

Armin nods. "No problem. Did you remember your paper?"

"My bio… oh, shit!" I dive into my bag, pushing aside old assignments and some random books out of the way in search of my biology paper.

I groan. Last night, I tried to work on the stupid paper and gave up because I didn't have the motor skills necessary for typing. I never even printed the assignment. I don't want to tell Mr. Hannes that I forgot my homework. Shit, and I need the grades, too. This is a disaster.

I turn to Armin. "I don't have it."

He winces sympathetically. "You know Eren, you're sick. If you explain to Hannes that you couldn't get your work done because of your condition, I'm sure he'll give you an extension."

I shook my head. "FFI already causes enough problems. It shouldn't keep me from doing my homework on top of everything else. I'll just tell him I didn't get it done and take the grade."

Professor Hannes comes in and scans the class to make sure everyone is here – Good to see you back, Eren, - and immediately says, "All right, hand in your papers." He surveys the class. "You had two months to complete this, so I don't want anyone to tell me that they aren't complete."

My ride on the bus this morning was pretty humiliating, but it's hard to say that it was worse than siting at your desk while everyone else turns their papers in.

Jean shoots me a puzzled look on the way back to his seat. "Jaeger, why aren't you up here?"

"Don't start," I warn him.

He raises both hands in surrender. "You know it's right there on your desk, right?"

"What the hell Jean? It's – " It is on my desk. _CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF GENETIC MUTATIONS IN HUMANS._ Typed, neat, and – I flip through it quickly – complete.

I never completed it. I never even printed it, but it's siting on my desk. Eden was one thing, but this is a whole new level of unreal. I walk up to turn in my paper in a daze. Jean rolls his eyes.

I'm confident that the notes I take during class are readable, and it's a relief to hear information that doesn't go in one ear and out the other. Armin leans over and whispers information that I don't remember covering, and Jean is mercifully quiet.

I'm disappointed when I leave the building and stop for a minute to stare at the campus. Now that class is over, I don't know what to do with myself. I still have a good eight hours before I can settle down for the night, and visit Eden.

Jean slips up behind me and rests his elbow on my shoulder. "Hey Jaeger, I'm going to grab some coffee with Sasha and Connie. You're coming with us."

"We haven't seen you in forever," Connie's voice drifts over my shoulder.

"Plus we don't have any cash," Sasha chimes in, "and we're hungry."

I let them drag me away. "Is Armin coming?" I ask.

"He's got work to do," Jean shrugs. "Smart people never have any free time."

We end up in a little coffee shop on the west side of campus with Café Maria hand painted on a small sign out front.

We sip our drinks at a tiny corner table.

The four of us end up talking about pretty mundane crap, but it's nice to be distracted from everything for a while It's easy to drift in Sasha's monologue about how the lady at Chipotle robbed her, how dare she charge her for three orders of guacamole when she only got two. It's not mind-numbingly boring – I am paying attention – but it's simple. Uninteresting. We don't talk about sleep or dreams. Crazy nightclubs don't come up.

Halfway through Jean's rant about his last chemistry exam, I realize that I still have six hours before I can head back to Eden, and this is becoming nothing more than a way to kill time.

How will I get back? I could try to walk to the club, but I almost just want to sleep. I woke up in bed this morning, so it's possible that I can fall asleep in it tonight. I hope that's true and I can lie down.

Jean, Connie, and Sasha are still chattering away when I excuse myself and hurry through campus to catch the bus. The old lady isn't on the bus this time, your writing is flat. Add some senses. but neither is Isabel.

When I get home I say hi to Dad – Mikasa is out boxing with Annie – and head up to my room. I'm not sure how I'll get rid of the next… five and half hours? Yeah, well, I'll think of something.

I just really want Eden.


	3. The Forever Court

Once I thought about it, it didn't make sense to try and sleep in order to reach Eden. I needed as much time as I could get to spend on the Other Side tonight, and I didn't want to waste any time trying to fall asleep. Instead, I waited impatiently for everyone in the house to go to their rooms for the night. Then I slipped downstairs ad headed out towards Eden. The walk went exactly the same way it had the first time. My thoughts ended up drifting, and before I knew it, I was lost in the weird part of town. From there, I followed laughter and clinking glasses through the streets to the gate of the club.

Levi isn't at the gate. I think we would meet in the same place we did last night (except this time, it would be on purpose), but he isn't standing by the painted dove. I stifle my rising nerves. Maybe he's just not here yet. He said he would come, and he's not going to break that promise.

I want to wait inside for him, but I don't want him to get confused if I'm not here, so I'll wait.

I can feel the seconds draining through my fingers. Every minute that passes on this side means one less on the Other Side, and that's before passing through the gate to the Other Side, which Levi said accelerates time. I don't want to leave Levi alone out here after I made such a big deal about coming to see him, but I don't want to spend too much time waiting. The familiar twisting, anxious feeling of not having enough time rises in my stomach and I grit my teeth. He needs to come soon.

"Speak of the devil," I jump at the low tenor, and relief washes over me when I see Levi standing a few meters away, watching me. Tonight, a fresh breeze blows through the concrete buildings, and the night sky doesn't have any snow that I can confuse with the glittering stars. Levi's abandoned his jacket in favor of a suit complete with dress shoes and a frilly piece of white cloth around his throat in place of a tie. He looks composed and elegant, and I can't help but feel a little self-conscious standing next to him in jeans and a hoodie.

He scans me up and down for a minute, seems satisfied with whatever he's looking for, and says, "Have you been waiting long?"

I don't know, really. It could have been forever, but I wasn't paying attention. "Not too long," I decide. "I've only been here a few minutes. We should figure out when exactly we'll meet," I add. "For the future?"

Levi nods shortly and steps past me to press his fingers into the crack of the dove's wing. The wall falls away to present the tunnel to Eden. We hurry through the passage, and my chest starts to tighten up the same way it did last time. I grit my teeth and try to divert my attention to Levi. "Did you really send someone to check on me?" I ask.

"Isabel?" Levi huffs, and I can't decide if he's amused, or something else. "Do you think that I sent her to check on you?"

I blink. Didn't he? "That's what she told me."

"That's not true."

"Then why did she come?" I ask. He's being blunt now, and I can't decide if I should be irritated or disappointed at his answer. "She's your sister, right?" Another question pops into my mind. "How do dreams have siblings? Do you have the same dreamer?"

For the next few minutes, all the noise I hear comes from the pounding of my irregular, stalling heartbeats.

"I did wonder if you were doing alright," Levi answers after a while. "I had to tell Isabel that I would be gone for some nights because I'd made a promise to an idiot brat. She's a pretty nosy little twit herself, so she volunteered to come check on you." He shrugged. "I can't do it, and if it would shut her up, then she was welcome to go right ahead."

"As for how dreams have siblings. I really don't know. Maybe we have the same dreamer, maybe we're dreams about the same thing, and really, just fuck if I know. She's my sister. That's what she is, and that's what I've always called her. That's just how it is."

I frowned. "You really don't know much about yourself, do you? You don't know who your dreamer is, and you don't know what kind of dream you are. You don't even know why someone is your sister." He didn't seem too concerned about it, but I had a hard time reading him. He seemed like a good man, but he did some weird little things. Like the thing last night where he wouldn't take his jacket off, or the moment earlier where he said – he said _"Speak of the Devil"_ , and right when I had been thinking about him showing up. What was that, mind reading? I'd ask him later.

Levi visibly stiffened. "You say that like it's abnormal, Brat. You think it's strange that dreams don't know who they are, but dreams are like abandoned things, you know that? Humans have parents. Most of us never know who our makers are. We're just thrown into existence in whatever stage of growth that our dreamer wants, and we're excepted to fend for ourselves and hope that we don't die. Trying to figure out who we are is philosophical drabble that we don't have time for. Besides, what point is there in trying to figure out what sort of dream we are and where we come from? It won't matter. The only dreams who say that it does matter are the point zero zero three percent who need to know, for whatever reason. Or some tiny-ass number like that, I don't know."

He turned back to watch me with a hard glare. "Treat me like a human being, but stop expecting me to act or think like one. I'm a figment of someone's imagination. I do not function the same way you do."

Levi's outburst takes me by surprise, but I'm strangely touched by his insight. He's right that I've forgotten that he's a dream, but it's hard to see him as something other than human. He's as real and solid as person, and as far as dreams go, he looks pretty normal. He doesn't have anything blatantly supernatural, like wings or horns.

Stepping into Eden the second time doesn't feel any different from the first. Levi and I settle into a corner by the door to adjust to the sudden blast of heat Levi curls his lip at the stink of sweat and alcohol, and I ogle the club. Eden is just as impressive the second time around. I can't believe that the club is a sphere – it must be perfectly balanced, because I think it would be easy to tip it on its side.

"Brat," Levi interrupts. "Your eyes look like they're going to jump out of your sockets."

I frown and turn to him. "So?"

He shakes his head. "You can't waste time if you want to go to find your cure. Let's go."

I scramble to my feet and hurry after him through Eden. "Do you know where to go for a cure?" I ask him. A pair of shrieking girls slides down the banister of the club's central staircase. "I thought that maybe there's a drugstore somewhere? Or a potions shop? Where in Eden would you find medicine?"

Levi shoots me a bemused glance. "Brat, you don't need to think so uniformly. It's your dream. It could be anywhere."

"Not _anywhere._ I don't want it to be at the bottom of an ocean or in something's stomach," Then it's too hard to get to.

"Smart," Levi agrees. "but Brat, I don't think you're going to find your dream in a potions shop or drugstore. At least not in the one near where I live," He amends. "I checked those already."

I offer a vague noise of disapproval. "You don't have to do that," I'm grateful that he already scouted some locations out for me, but he shouldn't do that during the time when I'm not with him. The whole point of meeting in Eden is so that I can search for a cure. During the day, he should – I don't know, do dreams sleep? I file the question away for later.

"Where do you think the cure will be?" I ask as we slip through the gate and into the tunnel. I walk down the center of the path to stay as far away from the dripping shadows as possible. The deformed black blobs jiggle and sway as Levi and I pass, rolling after our shadows One of them accidentally rolls into light, and its surface begins to foam. It lets out a gurgling wail, thrashing over the floor. Levi throws the thing a disdainful glance without stopping, but I can't take my eyes off of the nasty blob until it starts dripping thick, rust-colored blood.

"I don't know exactly where your cure will be," Levi admits, "but I do know someone who might be able to help you find it." He pauses. "She might be able to make one."

I chew my lip. "How hard would it be to search the Other Side for the cure?" I'm grateful to Levi for finding someone to help me, but I want to see this world of dreams.

Levi shakes his head. "It's not possible to scourge the other side. It grows every day, and there are a lot of places that would kill you within five seconds." He throws a wary glance my way. "You'll get a chance to see the Other Side, but be careful about wishing for an adventure or someshit. The things people wish for here tend to come true, and adventures with dreams are needlessly dangerous."

With that, he flings open the door to the Other Side. I hurry out into the world, and once again, a dream leaves me breathless.

Last night's field is nowhere to be seen. The only familiar parts or this landscape are Levi and the looming, titanous moon.

My feet shift over the sharp, uneven rock under my shoes. The earth slopes steeply uphill without a clear path until the hill kisses the feet of the palace.

The palace reminds me of a piece of abstract, modern art. It's cut from what looks like stained glass, and the multicolored facets reflect the moonlight over the rocky ground. The palace looks like it's breaking apart, or maybe that it's trying to throw itself in all directions at once. It reaches outwards and pierces the air with sharp, irregular shapes.

Levi steps closer to me until he's just shy of touching my shoulder. "Exploring Eden is dangerous," He repeats, "and so is the person that that's going to help us. The difference is that she's our best option, and she wouldn't dare hurt you. Be careful and follow my lead." He sets off up the slope.

I scramble up after him and discover that I'm out of breath within the first two minutes. Not sleeping makes it almost impossible to have a good workout, and I haven't been able to swim for the past couple of weeks. I sigh. I'm already hopelessly out of shape. Going back to practice is going to be awful.

When we finally reach the summit, Levi gives me a minute to catch my breath while he scans the area around us. "Any moment now Brat, some people are going to show up. Don't talk to them. Don't try to touch them."

We set off towards the palace.

The people he's talking about are pretty hard to miss.

We have to wade through the palace courtyard to get to the front gate. The garden is set up like an open-air pavilion, with columns ringing the area but no room or time floor. A still fountain is choked by a wild nest of ebony roses and blue rain flowers with a giggling woman sitting in the empty marble basin. A pair of kids that look about eight years old lie spread-eagle on the ground, the way you would if you wanted to make a snow angel. There's no snow on the ground, just pale grass, so I don't realize right away that they are indeed trying to make snow angels in the dirt. A man in a disheveled blue suit rushes past with a pair of wine glasses under one arm and a tea bag hanging out of his pocket.

I don't know what to make of the people, so I focus on following Levi through the garden towards the manor. We pick our way over broken bottles and tattered streamers.

"What's wrong with them? I whisper to Levi.

Levi pulls up the collar of his suit (I have to ask him why he's wearing that). "They're dreamers. Not dreamers like you." He adds quickly when he sees my new interest in the crowd, "Lot dreamers. They came here for the party, and now they can't leave. Their brains ran away with any chance they had of going home."

I shudder. "Won't they die when the sun rises?"

Levi shakes his head. "These dreamers are fed on constantly. They're not solid enough to really be living humans anymore. Every part of them is being eaten away, and soon they'll be part of this dream. This all –" He waved his hand at the aimless dreamers – "is the biggest reason that you shouldn't spend a lot time around dreams and Eden. If you get fed on often enough, you lose your mind."

The scene is sad, but it won't deter me from spending as much time around dreams as I want to.

The moment we step through the double doors and into the palace, it feels like a different world. An orchestra set up along one wall plays an upbeat tune, and the opposite wall is occupied by a long table stacked so high with food that it's noticeable bending in the middle. The people here seem normal, albeit very dressy. I'm not a fashion expert, but the suits and dresses that everyone in the crowd wears look pretty high end. Some of the women wear enough glittering jewels to almost blind me, and I don't know how they can walk in those crazy heels (which probably means that they cost more than my yearly salary). Now it makes sense why Levi is so dressed up.

"What's the matter, Brat?" Levi asks. "You're starting to look constipated. You're not scared, are you?"

I scowl at him. "Of course I'm not scared. I just should have worn something fancier, that's all."

Levi snorts. "You look fine." He turns to peer into the crowd. "She's supposed to meet us by the front gates, but I don't see her." He sighs. "I don't want to wait with these lunatics watching our every move."

I frown. "Nobody here looks as crazy as the ones… you know, the ones outside." The crowd in the tall, marble hall laughs and dances. A few people wander around, and there's a lone man stuffing his face at the buffet. It looks like something out of the 1800s, but nothing seems wrong with the crowd.

"Oh, these fucks are on their way," Levi promises. "Give them a few more days, and they'll be completely gone."

I take a closer look at the crowd. One woman in a violet dress turns to stare at me, and I flinch involuntarily. Her eyes gleam a featureless jet black.

"Yooo-hooo! Levi, darling, I'm so sorry to keep you waiting!"

"Is that I her?" I ask.

Levi curls his lip. "Unfortunately."

The crowd parts to make room for a woman striding through the crowd towards us. Her tall high-heeled boots echo over the music every time she takes a step on the marble floors. She's wearing tan leggings and a royal blue linen button-up that reveals an exaggerated collarbone, but the modern look is offset by the top hat she brandishes in one hand. Her long, chocolate brown hair is bunched and volumous like she just freed it from a ponytail.

When she gets closer, I can see that her cheeks are flushed an unusually bright pink against her pale ski, and her lips have been painted a deep, cherry red.

She throws both arms around Levi in a monstrous. He stands rigidly while he waits her to finish. The moment she lets go of him, he takes a step back and she turns to capture me in a bone-crushing embrace.

"You must be Eren!" She's almost shouting in my ear. "Levi said he would bring you. What do you think of Eden? Has the Other Side been good to you? I've met a lot of dreamers, but none of them have been sick." She pulls away and scrutinizes me from a distance. "Oh Levi, he's so young and beautiful!" She dips against me and loops an elbow around my neck. "I think," she breathes giddily in my ear, "that it is very sad when young people die. Old people are supposed to die, but young humans have their whole lives ahead of them. I don't like it when children come to my home, because then they have to die, right? I kill them. I don't kill them on purpose, but they die here anyways."

A chill creeps up my spine. Why are we trying to get help from a woman who kills people? I trust Levi – I don't have much of a choice – but how can a murderer find a cure?

"Fuck off, Hange," Levi snarls. "You're going to scare him."

"You're a pretty scary person yourself, Vivi," She lets go of me and grins crookedly. "It's so interesting to finally meet you, Eren Jaeger. Levi never shows me his dreamers." She flashes him a reproachful glare.

"I don't speak to them in the first place. Most dreamers are assholes who think they rule the world. They think that since they built everything on the Other Side, they have a right to get off trying to manipulate all the dreams around them."

That sounded awful. Dreamers had their own lives, and they knew who they were. Eventually, anyways. Dreams didn't seem to know anything for certain. "It seems so unfair," I note.

Hange and Levi stop bickering and turned to me. "What?" Levi asks.

I flush. I hadn't realized that I'd spoken aloud. "Dreamers made Eden and they can decide whether you live or die. Dreams don't seem to have a lot of control or choice."

"Generally," Levi agrees.

"It depends who you are," Hange adds.

She glances at her wrist. "You came to talk to me about a medication for Eren?" Levi nods in confirmation. "Let's do that, then. Do you want to go somewhere a bit more private?"

"Please," I say gratefully. I don't want to discuss saving life when I'm standing in a sea of people who are slowly wasting away. I don't want to discuss life with a woman who kills people either, but I don't have a choice in there.

Hange turns and scans the crowd. "Moblit! Moblit, where are you? We have guests." A moment later, a wide-eyed blonde man appears at her side. "Eren, Vivi, this is my assistant, Moblit Berner." Moblit offers us a small wave.

Hange spins on her heel and beckons for Levi and me to follow her with a flourish of her hand. As we pass through the ballroom, people reach out to touch Hange's clothes and hair. They coo and call to her as she passes. One woman, who's nothing but skin stretched tightly over bone, snatches her hand and starts speaking rapidly in what sounds like Italian. Hange stops to gently pry the woman's fingers off of her wrist before continuing through the hall. The woman crumbles to the floor and starts to wail. The orchestra quickly rises in volume to cover the piercing noise.

My stomach turns. "Can we help her?" I whisper to Levi. "What's wrong with her?"

"No," Levi says curtly. "There's no point trying to help her. Hange lures dreamers into the Other Side and feeds off of them the moment they step foot in this cesspit. The party keeps them here until she can addict them, and then they don't leave. They just stay here until she takes too much from them and they die. The only way to save that woman is to convince her to leave." He snorts. "You're stubborn, Brat, but you can't get her away from here."

I shudder. Levi is here to help me, but if I was here alone, then I would probably be one on the people in the garden. I'd lick the ground or something until I died. Nobody would ever know what happened to me.

I follow Levi as closely as I can without stepping on his heels. That's a horrible way to die, losing your mind in a place far away from the people you love.

"My home is a death trap," Hange agrees as we slip through a side door and down an empty hall, "but you know, dreams need to be true to their dreamers, even if dreamers aren't true to us. We can be our own people as long as we stay true to the core concept of what we are. For me that means I'm a dream of ensnaring. I capture the people around me. The come to me. They want me. As long as I keep that part of me true, then I can be whatever else I want."

"You don't need to feed on these dreamers to survive, do you?" I ask. "You have a dreamer who believes in you." "Whether or not these dreamers believe I me will not determine if I live. However, I need them here to fulfill my meaning. I need to control them. I need to be powerful. For what it's worth, most of those dreamers are the awful ones Levi mentioned earlier. The ones that think dreams are monkey they can tell to jump through hoops. Having them here is a sort of justice, and I need that for my meaning." She flashes me a half-smile. "Maybe I'm monstrous for what I do to them, but it's okay if I am. I certainly can't be heroic.

"How strong are you?" I ask Hange. "I know that there's a hierarchy of dreams."

"Such a clever dreamer you have, Levi!" Hange beams. "Yes, there is an order to dreams." She counts them off on her fingers. "Forgotten dreams are the weakest dreams. They're the ones that nobody remembers anymore. No human on the face of the Earth ever thinks of them. They die. Above forgotten dreams are the scorned dreams, which are dreams that are remembered but, well scorned. Mocked. Laughed at. People look back on them and wonder why they ever tried to follow those dreams in the first place. Abandoned dreams are a little better off. Their dreams don't work to make them reality, but they're kept in mind. It's still possible that dreamers believe in their abandoned dreams, but they don't try to work towards them. Grey dreams are the dreams that are remembered but not believed in. Immortalized dreams sit right above grey dreams. They sound really dramatic, but they're actually not that powerful. They're the dreams that are spoken about, or shared, written down, etc. they're dreams that people other than the dreamer somehow know about. Held dreams are the dreams that are still remembered and believed in, but their dreams don't try to achieve them. Fed dreams are the dreams that are actually being worked towards and fought for by their dreamers. They're the strongest dreams you'll find in Eden because their dreamers always strive to make them tangible."

"What about dreams that come true?" I ask. "You didn't include them."

"Ah. Well." Hange lets out a breathy laugh. "Fulfilled dreams are a theory. Logically they should exist, but nobody has ever met one."

"They're very rare," Levi interjects.

"That must be the case," Hange agrees. "I've been searching for a fulfilled dream for the past twenty years, but I haven't found one yet." She pauses. "I'm sorry Sweet, I haven't answered your question. You wanted to know how strong I am? I'm a fed dream."

"What about what kind of dream?" I ask. "Are you a fantasy, or…?" Between her party of death and her weird, crazy behavior earlier, I think I can guess, but I want to hear her say it.

"Fantasy," She says promptly.

Her answer surprises me. "Really? You act like a nightmare."

Hange flashes me another quick grin. "Dreams are very subjective, Sweet. One dreamer's fantasy is probably someone else's worst nightmare. Maybe You would call me a nightmare, but I'm a fantasy because that's how my dreamer thinks of me." She shrugs. "What kind of dream someone or something is doesn't really matter much. Not all nightmares are horrific, and not all fantasies are wonderful. In the end, what type of dream you are doesn't determine how powerful you are. That's up to your dreamer."

Dreamers don't realize how much power they have in this world. "Do you ever hate your dreamers for having so much control over you?" I ask. "I would. They hang over you your whole lives and decide whether you live or die."

"It's not so bad," Hange answers.

"Yes, it is," Levi speaks up.

Hange frowns at him before continuing. "Dreamers decide whether we live or die, but they're the reason we're alive in the first place. Without them, we would never exist. The Other Side is made up of dreams, so it wouldn't exist either. Dreamers also don't necessarily determine our personalities, just certain traits or goals we have. Other than that, we can be our own people."

"Not everyone," Levi says dryly.

"Not everyone," Hange acknowledges. "For some dreams, every single detail of their existence is determined by their dreamers. How much control dreamers have varies from dream to dream. It's complicated."

Levi snorts. "Dreamers hang over us our entire lives. If they don't like us, or if they don't take care of us, we're gone. If they die, so do we. It's stressful and it's terrifying. Nobody in their right mind is happy to live under someone's thumb like this."

"You can't break away from dreamers though, can you?" I ask. Both Hange and Levi shake their heads. "Then you have to live in constant fear, and you can't do anything about it." I frown. "The people that made you could kill you whenever they wanted. That's almost a sick joke."

Levi turns back to me. "Exactly." He says. There's a glimmer of a smile on his mouth.

We follow the hall until we reach the two doors at the end. Hange opens the one on the left and points to the one on the right at the same time. "That's my favorite lab. We'll probably be in there later, but let's stay in here for now." She leads us into the left room.

The left room is elegant, but it's very minimal. The walls are painted a royal blue, and the dark, lacquered wood floors shine in the moonlight from the high, open windows. The curtains billow in the night breeze and cast shadows over the wraparound black leather sofa that circles a small glass coffee table.

Hange kicks off her shoes, tosses her top hat off to the side, and throws herself down onto the sofa. "Moblit dear, could you bring out something to drink? A glass of the Moscato for me –" She points to Levi – "Water, yes?" He nods. "Water for Vivi, and…" She turns to me. "What do you want? You can have anything. Nobody here cares if you have alcohol, if that's what you would prefer."

I almost turn her down, but why not try a drink? It's not like I've ever tried alcohol before, but I've never been able to sit down and enjoy a full, real drink. "I'll take some of the Moscato, too." I have no idea what kind of wine a Moscato is, but wine is always fancy. I bet it's good.

We settle into the cool leather and Moblit brings us our drinks before moving to stand behind Hange. She turns to look up at him. "You can sit if you want, dear,"

"I'm fine where I am, Ma'am."

"Alright," Hange takes a sip of her wine and turns back to us. "Now, I know that Levi thinks that he needs an excuse to come visit me –"

"I don't want to visit you, you filthy lunatic."

"Yes you do. But anyways, that's not the real reason you're here, right? Eren, Sweet, what is this medicine that Levi told me you desperately need?"

I take a sip of the Moscato. The bubbles burn my throat, but the taste isn't unpleasant. I explain my FFI to Hange, and I tell her that the medicine is my dream. She listens silently while I explain that since a cure for fatal familial insomnia doesn't exist in the human world, I figured that I would have to find one on the other side.

Hange stares at her drink for a few minutes after I finish, and I take a few more swallows from my own glass. "I think," she muses, "that I can help you. I can definitely help you." When she looks up, there's an almost feverish glint in her eyes. "I've never studied someone with FFI before. It's such a rare disorder. I'm going to have to take some blood samples, and maybe monitor you, won't I? Will you answer some questions for me? Nothing you don't want to, of course, but I need to do some field observation before I can develop a medication. I want to know everything, Sweet. How long are you able to go without sleeping? What does it feel like, Sweet?"

I'm taken aback, but Levi saves me with a warning, "Hange. Not now."

She blinks. "Sorry. But it's important."

"The medication," I prompt her.

She nods enthusiastically. "Yes, yes, I can develop a medication. The problem with FFI is that it's such a difficult disease. I understand that it's fatal, so I don't have an unlimited amount of time. There's no way that I can begin by throwing random treatments at you and hoping that they'll work. We have to start with a solid lead. It's like solving a crime!"

Hange looks absolutely gleeful, and I'm scared that she'll deteriorate back into her initial wackiness. "where should we start?" I try to keep her on track.

Hange cocks her head. "FFI has a lot of consequences, but it's ultimately lethal. If we want to cure you, Sweet, we're going to have to undo death. We need to find something dead – no, something closer to undead. I already have plenty of dead people – and we need to find out what makes them tick." She claps her hands. "It's going to be a challenge, but we'll do it."

I can't tell if it's because Hange's joy is contagious, the wine is taking affect, or I'm just glad to have a lead, but I'm starting to feel a little giddy. "Where do we find something undead?" I ask.

"I know a place," Levi offers. He's pressed into the corner of the couch. Levi eyes our twin grins warily. "In Somniorum. They have catacombs under the city. If we go in at the right time, we can grab one of the skeletons without getting caught."

"Sounds like a plan," Hange stretches. "Perfect. You'll have to bring me back what you catch."

I look around the room, but there isn't a clock anywhere. "Is there still time to go tonight?" I ask.

Hange beams. "Actually, there's plenty of time. You see, the dreamers who come here never want to leave, which means that day never comes. Because they don't want time to pass, time stands still here."

I frown. "But then wouldn't time still flow outside of this place?"

"No," Hange says. "If you enter my home, time stops for you, personally. The passage of time isn't dependent on the palace so much as it is dependent on the person."

"If I was elsewhere in the Other Side, could I keep time from flowing?"

Hange shakes her head. "When dreamers are on their side, then they don't need a dream's input in order to influence them. When a dreamer is on the Other Side, they have to cooperate with what dreams want. Chances are that not all the dreams wherever you go will want time to stand still. It only works here, and maybe in a few other specific places."

"Oh," I need to find out where else time stands still. There might be some good places to spend some time in. I turn to Levi. "Can we go now?" I don't want to spend any more time sitting here, especially since we're surrounded by dying dreamers.

Levi nods and rises from the sofa. I turn to Hange. "Thanks for the drink and information."

She hums and takes another sip of her drink. "Come back soon, Sweet. Oh!" She jumps up. "I almost forgot. Moblit, do you have the key?"

Moblit produces a gilded box from a place behind the table and passes it to Hange. She beckons me over and whips out a gold chain that she presses into my hand.

It's a large, brass key. The key fits comfortably in the palm of my hand, and the metal is warm against my skin.

"It's a Dreamkey," Hange explains as I pull the cord over my neck. "It's inconvenient to go to and from the Other Side using the door, so this helps you to visit whenever you like. Otherwise you couldn't really go anywhere before you had to head back."

"Thanks," I say, and I mean it. "Do I have to visit Eden to reach the Other Side now?"

Hange shakes her head. "You can just will your way there."

Levi turns impatiently from his spot by the door. "This is nice, but let's go, Brat. Just because time stands still doesn't mean that I can't get impatient."

I say thanks to Hange one last time and head through the door. She's flops back onto the couch and asks Moblit for another drink. As Levi swings the door shut behind her, she calls, "Come back in one piece!"

"Do we have a choice?" I shout back.

Her cackles follow us down the hall.


	4. Somniorum

I stumble a few times on the way down from the palace. The third time I almost faceplant over a rock, Levi seizes me by the arm. "Christ, Brat, you only had one glass of wine."

"I'm just tired," I insist. My head feels like mush; the same way it always does after I haven't slept.

"Sure you are," Levi sighs.

Hey Levi," I ask, "how are we going to reach Som – what is it called? What is it?"

"Somniorum," He corrects me. "It's the biggest populated city in the Other Side. There's only one way for us to get to Somniorum, brat. We're going to take the train."

I frown. "Could we walk there?" I'm tired, but not tired enough for the train.

"Hell no. We'd never make it before sunrise. The train is the only way we're going to get to the city on time,"

I scan the plain below us. As far as I can see, there aren't any tracks in the Earth, and there definitely aren't any sings for a train or subway. "Where's the train station?"

"We don't need a train station." Levi says. "The train comes every three minutes. When we see it, we'll just get on."

"We need train tracks, though," I point out.

Levi snorts. "Maybe on Your Side, but not here."

At the base of the mountain, we're stuck waiting a few minutes for the train. I'm curious about what kind of train wouldn't need tracks, but I'm going to get bored just standing here and waiting. I turn and ask Levi, "How do you know Hange?"

He hesitates. "Damnit, Brat. Don't ask me so many questions."

He's more rigid that usual, with his arms crossed over his chest and a tick in his jaw. His reaction surprises me. "Is something wrong?"

Levi scowls. "The questions dreamers ask get answered, whether we want them to or not. That's a problem. I will not tell you why I know Hange."

"I don't care if it's bad," I reassure him. Hange acted nice enough earlier, but she kills people, and she seemed a bit crazy. Levi is so different from her, and I can't imagine them just meeting up and becoming friends. There has to be a story here, and for all I know, it might not be a nice one.

"Just drop it, Brat,"

I study him for a minute, but he's not looking at me. His eyes are locked on the distance. I drop it.

Levi said that dreamers get their questions answered, whether dreams like it or not. I'll find out about him and Hange eventually. For now, I won't push him.

There's a flash and a roar, and Levi turns to look past me over the plain. I follow his lead and watch as a glossy bullet train comes rocketing over the grass. It's on us in seconds and stops on a dime. The side of the train rests about an inch from my face, and my wide eyes are reflected in the metal.

"It doesn't have any tracks," The wheels hover above the grass, spinning on air.

"That's what I said, didn't I?" There's a barb in Levi's tone, but before I can say anything, he steps past me. "Let's go, Brat." I hurry after him as he heads down the train. A pair of doors in front of us slide open, and we climb inside.

The interior of the train is as glossy as the exterior. A thin walkway runs between rows of glass compartments filled with dreams chatting over tables and drinks. Moonlight shining through long windows to illuminate the passengers.

A tall, freckled boy in a blue uniform steps up towards us. "Sir," He addresses Levi, "could I please see your ticket?"

Levi produces a wallet from one of his pockets. "I'll buy one now."

"Very good, Sir." The two of them exchange a few bills for a crisp ticket.

My hands dart to my pockets. "Do I have to buy a ticket too?" Crap. I would have brought cash, but I didn't know I would need it.

The conductor turns to me. He has a nametag pinned to his breast pocket with the name MARCO printed neatly on the label. "Oh no, Sir. Dreamers don't buy tickets. You're already being fed on, so that's payment enough." He flashes Levi a teasing smile. "Although you're being monopolized at the moment, sir. I don't think the dream you have here is leaving anything for the others to feed on."

Levi just shrugs and heads down the aisle.

Levi and I go to three different compartments before we pick one to sit in. When Levi inspects the first one, there's a wad of gum under one of the seats. The second one has trash in the trash can, which is apparently unacceptable. He insists that the third one smells dirty, although I don't notice anything myself. It seems a little ridiculous, but it's more funny than irritating. That being said, I'm relieved when he decides that the fourth compartment is acceptable and I can sink into one of the plush seats. My head is killing me, and I'm afraid my legs won't hold me up.

"What did the conductor mean when he said that you're monopolizing me?" I ask the moment we settle into the seats. Levi closes and locks the compartment door.

"I'm the only person who's feeding off of you, and I'm blocking the other dreams here from eating you alive," He says. "Dreams feed off of dreamers, and we can't help it. That said, it's possible for a dream to latch onto a dreamer and claim them before any other dream can try to feed off of them." He watches me carefully. "I think it's better to have one dream feeding off you than one hundred. If you're going to get connected to dreams, you don't want to be constantly pulled in a hundred different directions.

I get what he's trying to say. Once again, he's protecting me from the Other Side. I almost want to be irritated – I don't want to be protected – but I'm walking blind in this world. I'm glad to take his help. "Thanks,"

Levi's eyes narrow. "Don't take it for granted, Brat." He turns to watch the terrain fly by through the window.

"Hey." I lean over and snatch his wrist. He jerks back, but I keep a firm grip. "Are you okay? Ever since I asked you about Hange, you've been weird with me. Did the question really make you that uncomfortable, or is there something else?" If it is the question, then Jesus, I said I was sorry. What does he want me to do? I have a hard time reading Levi. I might be overreacting, but he seems upset, and his responses have been ambiguous at the very least.

"Let go of me,"

"Not until you give me an answer,"

For a moment, we glare at each other across the table. His glare is feral, but I'm not giving in until I get an answer. "We're going to be spending a lot of time together, and it's going to be hard for both of us if you're an ass."

The staring contest continues for another minute until Levi lets out a sound halfway between a snort and a dry laugh. "You're right, Brat. We're going to be spending a lot of time together."The staring contest continues for another minute until Levi lets out a sound halfway between a snort and a dry laugh. "You're right, Brat. We're going to be spending a lot of time together." He tries to settle back into his seat and throws me a reproachful look, like a wronged cat, when my grip on his wrist restrains him. "Here's the thing. The whole reason I'm here in the first place is because fate's a sadist. It's just my luck that on the one night I go to Eden, I run into you." This time, he does laugh. "And because I can't help myself, I have to help the lost boy. Even though you're a fucking dreamer." He pauses. "Don't think that I hate that you're here, on the Other Side. If I were you, I would do exactly the same thing. I don't even hate playing nanny. I just don't like being a dreamer's nanny."

I bristle. "That's not fair. I can't help being a dreamer any more than you can help being a dream."

Levi snorts. "Brat, nothing is fair. That doesn't mean nobody is going to complain about it. I'd be amazed if you've never complained about your lot."

He's right. How many times have I cursed my genes? There was a fifty percent chance that I'd inherit mom's FFI, and someone out there decided that I may as well get a few bad genes. I'm not a bad person – at least, I don't think I am; I try not to be – but that didn't mean anything. It's random, and unfair, but that never stopped me from hating it.

I'm not going to admit that right now, though.

"I can't stand dreamers," Levi continues. "I'm lucky, but I've seen too many dreams who've been twisted in awful ways because of their dreamers. Hange? She doesn't mind being what her dreamer needs her to be, but she's an unusual fantasy. There are a lot of dreams out there who aren't so lucky. There's no possible way for us to escape our dreamers unless we want to die, so we're stuck under the thumb of you humans. You're like our gods." His mouth curled in a sneer. "Although you won't see anyone worshipping you. Once you're on the Other Side, on our own turf, you have to follow our rules a bit more. That doesn't help anything, though. You can't stay here forever."

"Some dreamers would call Hange monstrous for the things she does to humans, but I don't know if dreamers are any better," Levi says. You're not one of the worse ones, but you are still a dreamer. I'm going to resent you for that,"

I let go of his wrist, and he moves to fold his arms over his chest and watch me from his seat.

I don't know why I didn't catch it before he said so, but Levi clearly doesn't like dreamers. When we were with Hange, he was definitely a bit contemptuous of the dreamers at the party. Talking about them also revealed some obvious distaste he had for humans. I didn't say anything because we were about to discuss my cure. _My cure._

I was selfish.

"Okay," I take a deep breath. "I'm sorry, but what do you want me to do?" If he hasn't left already, then I don't think he's going to. We have to find a way to get along.

Levi blinks. I don't know if he was expecting a more dramatic reaction, but What does he want me to do? "We need to establish rules." He says. "Concrete ones. Not rules with 'buts'."

"Laws," I suggest.

A wry smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. "Laws." He agrees. He holds up one finger. "First, you will listen to me. Always. Most of the things I tell you to do or not do are in your best interest.

I'm already going out of my way for you, so don't take unnecessary risks. Got it?"

I nod. "I have one, too." I hold up two fingers. "Second of all, don't treat me badly or snap at me just because I'm a dreamer. I can't help it if you hate me, but please, at the very least, keep it to yourself."

"Fair enough," Levi agrees. "Third –" He holds up three fingers "Don't ask me personal questions."

That disappoints me. I want to know more about Levi besides the fact that he's a short, prickly dream. Still, I have to respect what he wants. "Fine, but we need to talk. Don't be like this, like you were with the whole dreamer thing. Don't just keep things to yourself, especially if you're going to give me crap for them." I frown. "You have to tell me things so we can work it out." I feel a little bit like my high school counselor, but it's the truth.

"That's fine," Levi says, "but it goes both ways. You have to tell me things, too."

I nod. "Is that it? Anything else we should add?"

Levi shakes his head. "That's it."

I reach across the table and offer my hand. He grips it, and we shake over our new laws. "These are unbreakable," Levi warns. "There are no exceptions, and there will never be exceptions."

Levi was the one holding things back, not me. Still, having his view of dreamers and our new laws out of the way makes me feel like a million pounds have been lifted off my chest. I settle back into my seat and watch the scenery fly by. Levi unfolds his arms, opting instead to drape them casually over the back of his seat.

Right now, the train rockets over the surface of a lake. Since the train only touches air, hovering as it moves, the surface of the water remains still. The train is fast, but not too fast for me to make out a looming city under the surface of the water. The windows of the skyscrapers are dark and empty, but the city isn't devoid of life. I catch the shape of a long, serpentine coil winding through the lake bottom.

The lake tapers off into a river that winds through a forest. Rows of thin, pale trees with lime leaves clamor for space along the banks. I jump as a winged monkey peers into our compartment, and a little girl with green hair watches us balefully as we pass.

"How long is the ride to Somniorum?" I ask Levi.

He checks his watch. "Not too long. It's about a thirty-minute train ride, so we should only be another five minutes or so. We'll have plenty of time."

"Is Somniorum a big city?" I ask. "Do you know it because it's famous, or…?"

"It's famous," Levi agrees, "Somniorum is the biggest city in the Other Side. Nobody has ever dreamed up a city bigger. No dreamer can imagine how anything could be bigger than Somniorum is."

I try to wrap my head around that. Somniorum is unfathomable. I don't know where to begin with trying to imagine something that big.

"But I also live there. A lot of dreams have homes in the city." He adds.

I guess Levi's ban on personal questions doesn't mean that he won't volunteer information by himself. Not that I'm going to complain. I try to picture what his home would look like, but all I can think of is somewhere clean. And modern? Minimal. "What's your home in the city like?"

He frowns. "That's a personal question, Brat."

"Right," I backtrack, abashed. "Sorry." I don't want my slip-up to poison our conversation, so I ask, "Where are the catacombs?"

"Not too far from home," Levi says, "but it's a bit of a walk from the train station."

"Will we have time?" I ask.

Levi rolls his eyes. "Jesus Christ, Brat. I said we would have time, didn't I? Stop asking. You're going to drive me crazy."

I blush and opt for watching the scenery.

There's a tap on the compartment's glass door. Levi and I turn to see Marco standing outside. The conductor offers us a wave.

I unlock the compartment door. "What is it?"

Marco points out the window. "I just thought that I should tell you that we're pulling into Somniorum's main station."

"Really?" I turn to peer out the window. Sure enough, we're pulling into a station. The view I get from the train window isn't incredible, but it's enough to make out the clamor of the trains. People press in on all sides of the tracks. Most of them don't bother to glance at the train, but I watch them. A pair of identical blonde boys move in unison to check their watches and grasp the handles on their suitcases. The sea of people heaves as a woman with four different wings – one butterfly, one feathery, one batlike, and one made of metal – rises above the crowd. Another woman in a black cape weaves through the crowd.

Levi rolls his eyes at my excitement. "Alright, Brat. Let's go." He rises and heads out of the compartment. "Stay close to me or you'll get lost."

We don't get off the train – it's more like we're shoved off, propelled by the dreams behind us. I cling to Levi's arm to avoid getting lost in the crowd. Levi forces his way through the crush of people with expert jabs. I let him pull me along and try to catch a glimpse of the station.

It's not what I expected. The dreams might be outlandish, but the station itself looks perfectly normal. It's populated by the same kiosks and pigeons of any other big train station I've been in. The roof is made of the same glass, supported by a web of crisscrossing steel beams.

There are parts of the Other Side that look normal, and parts that look wild, and I'm glad they're always side by side. It makes it easy for me to look at things and see them as real and not just figments of someone's imagination.

The moment we step out of the station and into the city, I decide that the station is the only normal part of Somniorum. Cities like this don't exist on my side of Eden.

The first thing about Somniorum is the size. Every building is at least a city block wide and the perfect definition of "skyscraper". They tower up into the night sky, higher than Eden's wall. I contort my neck into every shape possible until Levi tells me to stop before I break something, but I can't see the tops. I imagine the buildings to never end. They just go on and on into the night. The light coming from the towers is more than enough to make up for the nonexistent streetlights. The towers are covered with blue lights that give them a surreal glow and make them shine like glass.

When I wrench my eyes away from the skyscrapers, they're immediately drawn to the other buildings. All of the tallest buildings are regular, boxy rectangles, but the smaller buildings and shorter towers don't have any reason to their design. Small towers with scythe-like curves and red lights glowing on their corners loom over mushroom-shaped structures draped with warm white holiday lights. They're all beautiful, and I want to look inside all of them.

None of the buildings have billboards or posters. The advertisements flash on big screens posted along the sidewalk. Most of the pedestrians don't look at the ads. They don't have any time to before they're pulled away by the sea of dreams and wind from cars barreling past.

The only reason I'm not part of the churning tide of people is because Levi has pulled me into a small alcove outside the train station. He's waiting silently for me to finish staring at the city. I don't want to keep him waiting much longer, so I scan Somniorum one last time. I want to imprint the city into my mind. The sight of the towering constructions of dreams makes me itch to take a picture, or write the scene down, or _something_ , even though I don't think anyone could capture Somniorum.

I've never regretted anything more than I regret not having a camera right now.

I take a deep breath of air that smells like gasoline and wind. I want to take in as much of the city as possible. I ask Levi, "Will we have a chance to be in the city? Just for the sake of it, not to do anything?"

Either it's the light from passing cars, or there's a gleam in his eyes for a split second. "Yeah, Brat, we will. Are you done gaping?" There's no venom or impatience in his tone. "You're going to see plenty of the city. It's going to be hard not to, since we'll be in it. You just can't stand there with your jaw open the whole time. Something nasty will fly into it."

We walk through the crowded streets. Levi pushes me to the side until I brush against the buildings, far away from the people rushing past. I frown and push back. I want to be enveloped in the crowd. I want to brush against other dreams. Levi lets us merge into the crowd, but I keep a firm hold on his arm to make sure I don't lose him.

"Right now we're in the Interior," Levi says. The city smothers his voice, and I have to lean in to hear him. "The catacombs are in Rose District. We can walk there, but it'll take about half an hour." Before I can ask, he adds, "There isn't a faster way."

I stare at him for a minute. After the agreement we made on the train, he seems so relaxed. It might be because he got something off his chest, or that he doesn't feel pressured, but there's something different about him. I don't think he's going to start grinning, but he seems happier. Maybe it's that he's on familiar ground in Somniorum. I know the city makes me happy.

"Brat?"

I shake myself out of my thoughts. "That sounds good. How much time do we have?"

He glances at his watch. "Enough."

"That's vague,"

He rolls his eyes. "We have eight hours and seven minutes, but one hour and seven minutes of that don't matter. The catacombs aren't open yet."

I'll go crazy if I have to wait for an hour and seven minutes. "Let's just walk to the catacombs and see," I decide. "There'll be something on the way to eat up some time."

"True," Levi agrees. We turn and I follow him through the streets. "Especially since you stare so much. I swear, Brat, I could show you a pencil and you'd just sit and stare for an hour and a half."

I shrug. "I don't know what the pencils are like in Eden. Are they unusual?"

"All the people I know use pens," He says. "I don't know about pencils."

"Would it be too personal," I ask, "if I asked what kind of people you know?"

He frowns at the street, deep in thought. "I know people for stupid reasons, Brat, so they're all stupid people. I know people and don't know why I know them. I know people because I run into them since they can't watch where they're going. I know people because I have to." He's choosing his words too carefully to be completely honest, and he dodged my question entirely.

I should be happy that he answered at all, since it is a personal question, but I can't help myself. "That doesn't answer my question," I say.

"Which one?" "Whether the question is too personal, or what kind of people I know?"

"I-" He's being evasive. I grit my teeth. "Forget it." I'll figure out the answers to both questions myself. I've only met three – no, four, I remember Moblit – dreams, but Levi has to be the most frustrating dream on the face of the Earth.

My eyes wander over the streets. We're walking at a good pace. When we get to the catacombs, we'll have a lot more time then we'll know what to do with, so I need to find something along the way to stop us for a minute. My eyes land on a small ice-cream parlor at the corner of the street. "Hey, Levi, can dreams eat normal food?"

He follows my gaze. "Sometimes. Do you want something?"

"What do you mean by 'sometimes'?" I ask him while we stand by the shop. I peer into the case and frown. "What kind of ice cream is this? There's only one flavor."

"That's all you need here. You'll see, it's not really one flavor." Levi hands me a cone. I frown. I feel a little guilty that this is the second time in one night that he's opened his wallet for me.

We snatch a little table outside the shop where we can see the dreams pass by. I'm still frowning at my cone, and Levi asks, "What's wrong?"

I shake my head. "Thanks. I have to pay you back later for everything, and you know, you have to tell me when to bring my wallet -,"

"Just shut up and eat the fucking ice cream," Levi says. His voice is soaked in disbelief. "Christ, kid. You don't owe me anything. It's a train ticket and a goddamn ice cream. That doesn't mean anything."

I blush and take bite of the ice cream. "I just feel bad that you're going to such great lengths to take care of me – why are you looking at me like that?" He's wrinkling his nose.

"I can't believe you took a bite out of your ice cream. Ice cream is meant for licking, otherwise you'll hurt your teeth."

I frown. "Of course I bit it. Did you hear anything I just said?"

Levi snorts. "Kid, just forget about the money. Even if you wanted to pay me back, I don't know how human currency works here."

"Oh," I hadn't thought of that.

"Yeah," He settles back in his chair.

I take a bite of the ice cream, and now I understand what Levi meant about the ice cream not needing more than one flavor. The flavor keeps changing in my mouth, from mint chocolate chip, to caramel, to strawberry, and on and on. "Hey," I start, "You never answered the question I had earlier. What did you mean when you said that sometimes dreams can eat normal food? Why only sometimes?"

"Some dreams are lifelike enough to be able to," He explains, "and some aren't."

"You're lifelike enough," I decide. The idea of him not being lifelike is impossible. Levi isn't normal, but he isn't made of plastic.

"You can't be so sure,"

"Am I right?"

"I don't know. I've never tried."

I hold out the cone to him. "Then you can try it now,"

He stares at the cone for a minute. "Kid, I'm not putting my mouth on that. Your saliva has been all over it." He rises and leaves his seat. I panic for a minute. He's not leaving, is he? Did I offend him that much? I feel silly when he returns a moment later, carrying a small spoon.

He reaches over to take a small scoop of the cone – from a part I haven't bitten – and pops it into his mouth. I don't realize that I'm holding my breath until he swallows without batting an eye. Levi wipes his mouth with a napkin. "Looks like you're right, Brat."

"I told you so." He's staring at me again, and this time I don't think either of us know what he's looking at.

"Finish eating your ice cream, and let's go. We might have some time for you to keep staring at everything."


	5. Ivory Thieving

"Levi, there's a city in the sky," I finished my ice cream ages ago, but I wanted to take in the city for a while before we head to the catacombs. The moment with the ice cream had melted away, and Levi's face was once more nonchalant, but my heartbeat was still racing. I had to turn my attention to the crowd to try and calm it. We'd sat and people-watched until I caught sight of the cities floating high above us. This part of the city didn't have any gigantic towers, so I could clearly see the night sky and the ever-present full moon. The floating city is a looming black outline against the silver giant.

Levi glances up. "That's Elysium,"

"Have you been to it?

"Never. You need wings to reach that place. Since when do I have wings, Brat?"

"You should," Dreams are designed by their dreamers, I know that, but it's not fair that some dreams are made with wings and some aren't just because it's what a human wants. "Your dreamer should give you some."

Levi shrugs and absently folds his napkin. "My dreamer isn't limiting me. I could make myself wings, and it would still be in line with what my dreamer wants me to be. I just don't want any."

"Wait," I lean forwards in my chair. "You know what you mean as a dream, but you don't know what kind of dream you are or who your dreamer is?"

He nods slowly. "I think all dreams know what they mean. Otherwise, we die. Dreamers work for dreams to keep us alive, but we need to work for them, too. If we start being too different from what our dreamers want, we die off and get replaced by a better model of what they want us to be. We need to know who we are in order to fight for our lives. Hange thinks it's a survival instinct.

"As for what type of dream I am, I'm…" He frowns down at the napkin. "I'm strength, and security."

Levi always speaks easily. When he pauses like he just did, I think it means that he's tailoring his words. I grit my teeth. I wish it wasn't against our laws to press him. I look up at Elysium again.

"Why don't you want to go up there?"

"Isabel lives up there." Levi says. "She's told me all about it, and that's enough."

I narrow my eyes at him. "It looks beautiful. Everyone should see beautiful, amazing things."

His lips part slightly, like he wants to say something, but then his brow furrows and he shuts his mouth. Levi shrugs. "I see beautiful things every day, Brat. The stars are beautiful. The city lights are beautiful. Elysium is just another beautiful thing, and I'm not going out of my way to reach it when I have beautiful things on the Earth."

I frown. "I think all beautiful things are special. You can't say "Just another beautiful thing" if you're comparing a floating city and the stars. They're different."

"How?" He asks. "They both glow. Neither of them are reachable. They were built dreamers. How does that make them unique in their beauty? Because they're in different shapes? That doesn't mean anything,"

"They're still different from other beautiful things," I protest. "They're different from you, for example-,"

Levi's looking at me strangely. "You calling me beautiful, Brat?"

I flush. "I don't mean it like that!" I only mean it objectively. From our seat in the square, the city lights make his eyes and skin glow. They highlight his cheekbones and the clavicles that his dress shirt isn't covering. The lights behind him define his wide shoulders and nice physique.

He just shakes his head. "Alright, then, from your _objective_ point of view, how am I different from other beautiful things?"

I scowl reproachfully. "Don't laugh at me."

"Brat, that's like asking me not to look at you. It's unavoidable."

I huff. "I was going to compliment you, you know that?" I'm not so much angry as I am flustered. My cheeks are on fire.

He's not smiling, but there's a bright light in his eyes and a teasing lilt to his words. "Brat, you're still going to compliment me. You have to answer the question."

I sniff. "I don't want to anymore. You're making fun of me. Besides -," I cross my arms over my chest – "I ask you to answer my questions all the time, and you never do."

"I do answer you sometimes, and I have reasons for when I don't," The teasing edge in Levi's tone doesn't sharpen. "I thought your opinion of my beauty was objective, Brat. If it really is, then you don't have a reason to dodge the question."

I make a face. "You're watching out for me, and I don't know how much the city cares. You're two different beautiful things. Therefore, not all beautiful things are the same."

Levi snorts. "Of course the city doesn't care about you. It is just a city after all."

"You're also not shiny," I offer. "The city is."

Levi shakes his head. "That just sounds stupid."

"And you're a lot smaller than the city," I add. "You're pretty short."

"Cheeky, aren't you?" Levi says disdainfully. He checks his watch and rises from his chair. "I'm still not convinced. Anyways, Brat, we gotta go if we don't want to be late." I follow him into the press of people and down the street.

"It's good that you spend so much time watching Somniorum," Levi speaks up. "I'm not picking your nasty eyeballs off the sidewalk if they pop out of your head, but it's good that you gape at the city so much while you still can."

"Why's that?" I ask. He said I would have time to see the city later, so he can't mean that I won't get another chance to look at Somniorum. Does he?

"A lot of the biggest, craziest dreams in the Other Side are the dreams of children. Once the children grow up, a lot of them lose their old dreams. This city is built on a million dreams, but the key pieces are a few big dreams that come from kids. The size, for example. Once those kids grow up, who knows if the city will be this big? Parts of it are going to disappear. Buildings, districts, maybe even the catacombs. You said that everyone should see beautiful things, so it's good that you're here now and not ten years in the future."

The idea of Somniorum crumbling away puts a bad taste in my mouth. "What do you think of the city wasting away?"

Levi straightens his collar. "It's sad, but that's the way things work in this world. People and places are always changing. When Somniorum changes too much, I'll move on. Find a different place to live in. There's always a place that's been recently vacated, so it's not too hard to find a home."

We stop at an intersection, pressed together in a crowd of waiting dreams. "I don't think Somniorum will ever change," I say thoughtfully.

Levi raises an eyebrow. "No? Why not? Can you stop time on your side?"

"I can't stop time, but Somniorum seems timeless," I say. "Dreams mean things, and even though the city itself is made up of millions of dreams, Somniorum is a dream in itself. It has to stand for something. I think it stands for a kid's view of the world, or something like that. It would make sense since everything is so big here. The world always feels huge for little kids. That's a universal concept, right? Every kid on the face of the Earth sees the world as this unbelievably huge place. They're not going to stop thinking that. Somniorum will never fade."

Levi watches the glowing red traffic light. "Huh. Maybe you're right."

We walk in thick silence. It's heavy but in a comfortable way, like being wrapped in a particularly fluffy comforter. It must be around midnight on a Wednesday morning, but the sidewalks are still choked with pedestrians. They say that New York is the city that never sleeps, but I can't imagine that the crowds on Somniorum's streets will ever dissipate.

"Here we are, Brat," Levi says suddenly. "Rose District."

I look around. "How can you tell? There aren't any landmarks." There isn't a wall or a gate in sight. I don't see any cheery welcome signs or guard. There's no vehicle control, and, when I check, there aren't any street signs.

"You're standing on them,"

I look down at my feet. Sure enough, the sidewalk under our feet has changed from plain cement to cement painted with elaborate roses that shine navy blue under the lights of the city. No wonder all the dreams on the sidewalks look at their feet. If they don't, they'll lose track of where they are.

"The catacombs aren't far now. Maybe another half a mile or so," Levi says. As we travel further into the district, the city begins to change. The electric blue glow of the Interior's skyscrapers morphs into a rainbow of shades of red, green, blue, and yellow. The buildings stop looking sleek and modern and become more suburban and industrial. Apartment buildings draped with flags – some of which I recognize, like the Spanish coat of arms fluttering in the wind – stand in orderly rows. Rose still has towers, but they're not nearly as big as the ones in the Interior. The wind that blasted through the Interior fades to a gentle breeze that carries the faint tang of the ocean.

The main street, lit by warm, softly glowing streetlamps, quickly narrows into a dark, uneven alley between the buildings. I manage to avoid falling over anything in the dark while still following Levi, and soon the alley opens up again into a wider, grassy space.

The row of headstones and carved angels are unmistakable. This is a graveyard. I shudder. I only go to graveyards on Mom's birthday to visit her, and always during the day. It's cliché, but being in the graveyard at night, so close to dead things, scares me more than I'd like to admit.

My palms are clammy with sweat when Levi casually opens the door of one of the mausoleums and turns to me. "This is the quickest way down to the catacombs. This time of night, none of the skeletons are going to be awake, so we're gonna grab a clean one and run like hell. Once we're above ground, we'll be safe. The thing won't wake up once it's away from its home." He produces a pair of gloves and pulls them on before offering me a pair. "These will keep your hands clean." Levi looks up at me, and his eyes are stern, hard grey. "Are you okay, Brat?"

My hands tremble as I accept the gloves, but I'm not scared. "I'm just excited," I assure Levi. "Once we have the skeleton, I'll have my cure."

Levi raises one eyebrow. "It's not that simple, Brat. Hange still has to do some research, and then we have to see what she figures out. In the meantime, just don't fuck up." He reaches into a corner of the room and dusts off a stashed duffel bag.

The passageway into the catacombs is caked with dust, and the air is stale. Levi leads the way, so his back is turned to me, but I can imagine how disgusted he is by the dirt down here. If I can feel it settling in my lungs, I can only imagine how awful it must be for him. The only good part about the descent is that it's well-lit. At The very least, I'm not going to trip and send us both tumbling down the stairs.

The bones begin to appear. They poke up through the cement of the walls, and as we travel deeper, more and more of them become visible. They're nestled against the wall and in crevasses between stones. Eventually, the walls become bone, transforming from concrete to thick lines of yellowed ivory. Some of the bones are arranged in intricate designs, like hearts, flowers, or messages. One artist arranged a lattice of limbs and skulls into an Eiffel tower, of all things.

Levi looks back to check on me and catches me staring at the design. "I think this place is based off of your Paris catacombs. Or at least parts of it are." He suggests. His voice sounds flat in the enclosed, underground space.

"Or maybe the Paris Catacombs are based off of it," I murmur.

"Could be," He agrees mildly.

"Hold on," I say quickly. "How do you know about the Paris Catacombs? How much do you know about the outside world?"

Levi frowns and watches the bones. "You know, I'm not sure."

That's the end of that.

The Earth presses down on me from all angles, suffocating me with layers of dirt. Levi and I don't belong here. Underground isn't a place for living things. It doesn't even matter that much that I have to be down here. Right now, a breath of fresh air is just as important as my cure.

Levi looks perfectly fine. "How are you able to stand this?" I ask him. "Beings down here is awful." If the tunnel collapsed, we would be done for, dying alone in the dark, under people's feet without them knowing it. The thought makes me shudder.

"I used to live underground," Levi says. "I've been on the surface, but living down here isn't a feeling you forget. I'm used to it. I didn't live in the catacombs," He clarifies quickly, "I lived in a proper city. There's a whole district under Somniorum that's hollowed out for dreams to live in."

"Can we see it?" I asked curiously.

"No." Levi's response is immediate and hard. "No, we won't. It's a cesspit."

I'm not sure how my idea of a cesspit compares to Levi's, but the stone in his voice is unmistakable. "How long have you been living on the surface?" I ask.

"Just four months or so." He frowns at the dying lantern. "And Izzy used to live with me, but she just moved to Elysium."

I run my hands over the bones in the walls. I hook my fingers into yellowed eye sockets and tug experimentally, but the skulls don't budge. "Do you have any siblings other than Izzy?"

"I have a brother, too," Levi adds more fuel to the lantern. "I haven't seen him in a while, though. Brat," He switches the topic, "I see at least five good skeletons right here. Let's grab one and get out, yeah?"

He points out the skeletons – one below my feet, another thing I'm stepping on, and the others littered around the chamber – and pulls out a paper-thin steel blade. Before I can say anything, the blade sinks into the stone like butter. Levi shreds the rock around the chosen skeleton.

"Bring the lantern over here," Levi orders. "I can't cut the wrong thing, brat."

I hold the lantern over the skeleton and eye the blade warily. The duffel bag remains securely tucked under my arm. The flickering light paints shadows in the hollows under Levi's eyes, and it makes his sockets look as hollow as the skeleton's. Every swing of the blade is precise and practiced. His hands fit comfortably around the hilt.

"You've done something like this before," The stone chamber amplifies my voice.

Levi grunts once in confirmation. He lets the blade clatter to the floor and pries the loose bone free with his hands. "I used to use the blades a lot, back in the Underground. Not for grave robbing, though. That's the one thing I never did." He glances over his shoulder at me. "Can I have the bag?"

I unzip the canvas and hold it open for him. Levi dumps the bones inside and quickly wipes the dust off of his hands. "What do you mean, grave robbing?" I ask warily. "We're not robbing anyone's grave, are we?"

Levi shrugs. "We might be. Does it matter?"

I gape at him. "Of course it matters! We can't disturb someone's final resting place!"

Levi snorts. "If you want to have your cure so badly, then you should be able to do whatever it takes to get it. If you're not willing to make any and all sacrifices necessary, then your cure isn't worth as much as you think. If your cure is so important, then you can't worry about morals." He's never looked at me this way, so regal and apathic. "You gotta seize the things you want, Eren."

My stomach twists. "You can't just say 'fuck morality' like that. That's the sort of argument murderers use."

Levi folds his arms over his chest. "And what if it is, Brat? I didn't go to all this trouble for you to fuck off at a little bit of immorality. The dead don't care what we do to them. They're dead and gone."

"Actually," A quivering voice chimes in, "We care a lot."

The two of us spin around to stare at the willows, dark-haired girl standing across the room. Her pale green eyes glow faintly in the gloom. "What are you doing down here?"

I open my mouth to answer – truthfully, sine there's no point in lying, - but she cuts me off. "Never mind. I know why you're down here." The girls leans against the wall. "You want to take our remains, don't you?"

"These are your bones?" I burst out. Levi stiffens next to me, and I realize too late that it would probably be better to deny that we're trying to take anything.

The girl's eyes narrow triumphantly. "Mine and my friends. I don't care what you want with us, you can't come down here and play with our bodies." She takes a step forwards. "We have a lot of people who come down here with one excuse or another, and they take our bodies away the moment we blink. We're not going to take it any longer. You're going to pay for this."

This girl's body is only bone, and she's detached from it. A ghost more than anything. How can she lash out at us? But I'm forgetting that we're dealing with dreams. And Levi said the bones can move.

There's a gentle creaking sound, and the skeleton Levi was cleaning begins to squirm and claw at his arms. He throws it to the ground with a curse and kicks the shifting bones viciously. fragments go flying in every direction. As the bones smash, the girl clutches her chest and cries out. Her image flickers and disappears.

For a split second, Levi and I stand frozen in the catacombs. The skeletons are still immobile. The girl is still gone. For a brief moment, I hope that maybe nothing is going to happen.

Then all hell breaks loose.


	6. A Voice in the Dark

For a split second, I hope nothing would happen.

Then all hell breaks loose.

I watch in horror as the walls of the catacombs shudder and swell. The walls expand and contract once, then twice, and a hot breeze blows though the chamber. The ground heaves under my feet, and I barely manage to keep my balance.

"Well, shit." Levi seems relatively calm, given our situation. His only tell is a clenched jaw.

Something clicks in the silence. We both freeze, and I glance nervously around the chamber. Nothing seems out of place. The clicking comes again. This time it's continuous, and, like someone knocking on wooden wind chimes, hollow and solid at the same time. The chamber amplifies the sound. My heart is about to burst out of my chest. There's still no movement from the skeletons along the walls. My panicked gaze meets Levi's grim expression. Slowly, we both raise our heads to look up at the ceiling.

"Fuck!" Levi jerks back from the skeleton dangling inches above his hair. I scramble backwards from the empty sockets above my face. The two skeletons chatter and grind their teeth together. From the hips down, they disappear into the ceiling. Their lanky, sharp fingers snatch at my face. Their necks crack as they twist their heads to stare at us.

More clicking and rattling gradually fills the chamber. The jumble of bones covering the walls writhes and grinds. Limbs emerge from the fray and the skeletons test their dusty joints. Heads turn to stare at Levi and me while their bodies collect themselves.

The first whole skeleton lurches to its feet. Levi and I tense, and the skeleton takes a wobbly step forwards. Then another. Jaws snap open and close. I don't breathe. Then, the skeleton rushes forwards at us with a screech. I turn and rocket down the catacombs with Levi right behind me. The passage behind us fills with crashes and clamor as the skeletons orient themselves. I don't dare look behind us to confirm that they're in pursuit.

"The fuck is wrong with them?" Levi seethes. "They shouldn't be awake for another few hours. This isn't possible."

I don't reply. We don't have any time to discuss this now – the skeletons are loose.

I think I can remember the way to the surface, so we sprint through the bone passageways. Bones along the walls stir as we pass. No doubt they'll wake up behind us, and we won't be able to double back if we make a mistake. I have to trust Levi to stop me before I take a wrong turn. The clatter of bones dwarfs our frantic breathing and pounding footsteps. "Eren," Levi says behind me, "they're gaining on us." I peek behind us, and my stomach drops. He's right. The skeletons are shoving each other down the passage with enough force to overtake us. If we keep our current route, we're going to get caught.

I make a split-second decision. We can't afford to get lost down here. "How well do you know the catacombs?" I throw over my shoulder.

"Not well,"

Shit. Well, we'll just have to avoid straying too far from the path. There's a sharp right coming up, and I take the chance. I turn and bolt into the side passage. Levi follows me wordlessly. The bones screech, and the front of the pack can't turn to follow us. However, some of the skeletons in the back break away to follow us down the passageway.

"We can't run too far," Levi echoes my previous thoughts. "If worse comes to worse, we're going to fight them."

I glance back at him. "Can we do that?"

Levi shrugs. "You can fight anything, Brat. Why not the dead?"

I'm too busy watching him to slow down in time. The two of us crash into a wall, sending bones everywhere.

Levi is back on his feet in an instant. "Are you alright?" He asks.

I groan and wince. "I'm fine, but shit. It's a dead end."

My impact sent bones flying over the floor, and now they're beginning to shift and pull themselves together. Levi and I back away from the forming skeletons…

… And right into the pack. The skeletons block our escape route. They stand, silently now, in a thick pack and watch us watch them. Levi moves up to stand next to me, and his arms cross over his chest. Now that the chase is over, the skeletons are mellow. There's no more clattering and snapping jaws. None of them scrape their boney digits over the walls or jostle their neighbors. For now, their hunt is over, and they're not concerned with us escaping.

The sea of bones parts with a hushed rattle. The girl from before strides down the passage towards us. She's clutching her stomach, but the expression on her face is victorious. "Are you done trying to run away, thieves?" She asks calmly. "There's nowhere left for you to go."

"What are you going to do with us?" I ask warily. We can't afford to get held up by a ghost and her friends. I thought Levi said the skeletons shouldn't be awake, so why are they here now? Neither of us have an answer.

Levi snorts. "Whatever they do with grave robbers, Brat. I'm guessing that it's a serious offense down here."

The girl's eyes narrow. "You'll come to our cells. You'll get a trial, and then we'll see what we have to do with you.

I narrow my eyes. "Hell no. Nothing is getting dragged out for the sake of some show. I bet the verdict is pretty clear already."

Ghost Girl raises an eyebrow. "I suppose you're right. We probably have enough evidence to justify why we executed you on the spot. Do you want us to do that?" One of the skeletons clicks eagerly.

"No," Levi cuts in. "I think execution is better later rather than sooner." I can feel his eyes boring into the back of my head. _Shut up, Brat._ Ghost Girl still looks bemused. "Very well then." She turns on her heel, a filmy white dress billowing up around her. "This way, please." A pair of skeletons clap shackles around our wrists. Levi and I are escorted down the corridor and into the depths of the catacombs.

"Eren," Levi says, "I'm gonna do the talking." He flashes me a withering glare. "You're putting ideas in their heads that don't need to be there."

I frown down at him. "You always do the talking. Let me help for a change."

"You make it sound like we've been in situations like this before," Levi shoots back. "We're not fucking seasoned partners in crime. We've never gotten captured by ridiculous creatures and locked up in their underground dungeon. We got ice cream. Once. We didn't even fucking share it, either. 'You always do the talking'. Jesus."

"You're in a colorful mood," I mutter. "It's not my fault that we're down here, okay?"

Levi snorts. "When did I say that I was mad at you, Brat? I know it's not your fault." He pauses. "Besides, if it was your fault, then I'd tell you so. I'm not going to be an asshole about it. We've been over this already."

He's right, of course, but I'm glad. He remembered our agreement.

Ghost Girl and the skeletons lead us downhill and through a passage that twists and dips until I'm dizzy. Except for our little procession, the catacombs seem deserted. We don't pass any other skeletons or phantoms.

"Is anyone else down here?" Levi echoes my thoughts.

"Of course," Ghost Girl says. "You'll meet them in due time." The procession jerks to a halt. The skeletons holding Levi and me bring us up to a neat, round hole in the middle of the floor.

Without any warning, my skeleton shoves me forwards. I'm too surprised to push him back, and I tumble down into the hole. "Eren!" Levi shouts. I gasp for breath as my chest hits the dirt floor and all the air leaves my lungs. Levi follows me a second later, but he's more prepared. He lands on his feet. Like a freaking cat. Levi hurries over to me. "Are you alright?"

His concern surprises me a bit. "I'm fine." I take a few deep breaths, but nothing seems off. I'm just a bit out of breath. "Nothing's wrong."

He eyes me skeptically. "That's what you always say."

I peer up at him dubiously. "Because it's always true. Besides, 'always'? Didn't you tell me not to act like we're a seasoned team? What happened to that?"

"Brat. That was different."

"Hypocrite."

"We'll come for you soon," Ghost girl calls down the shaft. "In the meantime, this is going to be your home." She turns away, and a stone disk is pulled over the hole with a painful grinding sound. Levi and I are slammed into darkness.

"Well," Levi says grimly, "we're fucked."

I can't help it. I burst out laughing. "Man, those skeletons have to be - _ha_ \- pretty strong to get that rock over our heads. We're not getting past them."

Levi sighs again, but this time the sound is saturated with exasperation. "It's not funny."

"You're right." I giggle slightly. "It's not funny."

"Eren."

"It's hilarious!" I crack up. I don't know what's so funny about this, but I'm laughing so hard I'm scared that I'm going to make myself sick.

"Eren, are you feeling alright?"

"I feel like a skeleton just pushed me into a hole in the ground," I laugh.

"Damnit, Eren, I'm being serious."

"Me too!"

"No. You're scaring me a little bit."

"Really?" I roll over on my side to stare into the dark. I'm not sure exactly where he is, so I could be talking to the air, and that makes me laugh some more. "Levi, I think – _haha_ – I think I should be the one who's scared of you!"

The dark freezes. "Scared of me?" His voice sounds a little distant. He can't actually be that distant though, since we're in this little hole! The thought sends me into another bout of hysterics.

"You said so yourself, before all the skeletons woke up! Grave robbing was the only think you haven't done. _Hahaha!_ I mean, that was true then, but not anymore, because now you only half haven't done it."

"Eren you aren't making any sense."

"Well, we tried grave robbing and we failed, so we only get half credit." I had to stop laughing, or I wouldn't be able to talk. "But Levi – _heh_ \- Levi, that's not what I was talking about. I don't know what sort of things you've done."

"So you should be the one scared of me?"

"Well, duh."

"Eren, you can't be afraid of me."

I frown into the dark. "Why not?"

"Because… it's detrimental. We have to cooperate too much for you to be afraid of me." He shifts in the darkness. "What scares you about me?"

"I don't know you." Even though I'm relying on you!

"Do you have questions for me?" He throws the statement out of his mouth as if he's repulsed by it.

"Yeah. A few." But I bet each of his answers will just leave me with more questions.

"If I let you ask them, are you going to be less afraid?"

"That depends on what I learn." I answer.

"Okay," I can imagine him bracing himself. "Go ahead. Shoot."

"Really?" Is he going to let me ask questions about his past? And his personal life?

"If you don't hurry up, I'm going to change my mind," Levi warns.

I settle into a sitting position. This is a rare opportunity. I hope he's opening up for good, but I'm going to take whatever chance I can get. "You said that Izzy is your sister. Do you have any parents?"

"My mom is dead," Levi says curtly. "I don't know where my father is. And I have another sibling, a younger brother."

"Where is he?"

"Out South, probably. He's good with machines, so he got a workshop to himself. I haven't seen him in a long time."

"Did they live with you in the Underground?"

"I don't know what I would have done without them."

"What was the Underground like?"

"Like I said, the place is a cesspit. It's easy to grow food underground, and thankfully it's not all fungus. We have plenty of underground rivers, so water isn't scarce. It shouldn't be hard to give people the resources they need to survive. The only reason it's horrible is because it's become a place for a lot of weak, petty nightmares to crawl around in," A bit of contempt drips into his voice. "The majority of dreamers think that demons live in the dark and in the dirt. Their nightmares end up lurching around in the Underground and causing problems for the rest of us."

"Did they ever hurt you?" I'm starting to understand.

"One of those beasts killed my mother,"

"I think I get it now," I whisper into the dark. "You don't just hate dreamers because they oppress dreams as a whole. They've hurt you a lot personally, haven't they?" Levi's seen dreams twisted by their dreamers, and they've hurt him and his family.

"My brother is named Farlan," Levi says darkly. "He used to have wings. He lost his to a nightmare. If he still had them, he could be up in Elysium with Izzy."

"I'm sorry,"

"You can't apologize for other dreamers, Brat. Especially if you don't know them,"

"You could be up there with Izzy," I point out. "You said you could have wings. What's stopping you?" He said that he just doesn't want to, but that can't be right. What's holding him back?

Levi doesn't answer for a long time. Have I lost him in the dark? The stifling blackness closes in on me, and I'm reminded of the black shadows in the tunnel to the Other Side. The dark steams and hisses, and the thick air coats my lungs.

"Levi?" I call into the dark. "Levi, where are you?"

There's some movement off to my side. "I'm here."

"Can I come closer?"

Another silence. The dark is crushing me.

"Levi, please," I whisper.

"You're not doing it anyways? Yeah, come over,"

I scoot over to his voice and feel around in the air until I bump into a shoulder. I lean in carefully and put my head on muscle. Levi feels like a rock. He's tensed up. "I don't want to make you uncomfortable," I tell him.

"I'm afraid,"

I blink. "What? I can move away-,"

"No, not that. You asked me why I don't grow wings." His shoulder rises and falls as he takes a deep breath. "What happens if I grow wings and go up to Izzy, only to lose them? What if I leave one day, and never come back, and she sits up there wondering why I don't visit? She could come down and ask me, but it would break her heart. She's made for the sky. The Underground was really hard on her, but the surface never was much better."

"If she really loves you, she won't care about going to the surface," I scold him. "You talk to her anyways, so she has to come down."

"I wish she didn't. She's safer up in the sky, and she has people with her who will protect her. I just bog her down – hey, watch it Brat!"

I whack him across the shoulder. "What kind of response is that? Let people take care of you. You should be glad that you have people who love you."

"Right. Brat, do you know why I was scared earlier? When you were hysterical?"

"Was there something wrong?"

"Have you slept recently?"

"Yeah, I slept last night. Why?" Suddenly, it hits me. "Oh. You think that my FFI was affecting me?"

"You were completely irrational,"

A cold weight settles into my stomach. I got a full night of sleep last night, but that can't completely make up for three nights without any rest. And emotional instability is a key symptom of FFI, at least in the early stages. "It's just one little outburst," I assure myself. "It doesn't matter. I'll find a cure and crush this sickness."

"Right." I glance in the direction of his face. He's not being sarcastic.

"Wait a minute!" I burst out indignantly. "You're trying to distract me again, aren't you? Levi!"

"It's a genuine concern," He points out mildly.

"Yeah, but your timing makes me suspicious." I jab Levi in the ribs. He grunts in response. He wanted to draw me away from his own problems, so he brought mine up. He wants to distract me.

"I haven't really asked you the worst questions yet," I say more seriously. "About the things, you've done. Have you ever hurt people?"

Levi stiffens even more. "Sure. Down in the Underground, nightmares are everywhere and they're just as likely to cheat or blackmail you as they are to eat you alive. You have to be a monster in order to fight off other monsters, Eren. Besides, my dreamer didn't care much about me then. I wasn't very strong, and every day I woke up and wondered if I was going to die. It's really hard to live in those conditions, and you have to be brutal to survive. I've hurt more people than I can count. Mutilated them, tortured a few, killed a lot. I've stolen a bit, too. Not all of my victims were nightmares, either. There were a lot of innocent people mixed in with the beasts. I couldn't afford to choose. For what it's worth, I didn't enjoy it. And I never hurt anyone without a reason. All I wanted was to protect my family."

"I don't think you're evil," I tell Levi. "People should never be hurt, but you couldn't help it. You only wanted to protect what you loved." I can understand that. "If anything, it's the people who put you in that position who should be condemned. But in the catacombs? The grave robbing? Did we really not have a choice there?"

He sighs. "No, we didn't. There wasn't any other way to work towards your cure."

"Is there really no other place we could go for something undead?" I press. "I don't want to rob other people's graves." I have people I love in the ground, too. If someone tried to steal Mom's body, I would tear them apart.

Levi shakes his head. "All the other options would cause harm, too."

I frown and remove my head from my shoulder. "I don't want to find a cure if it means hurting other people!"

"I came this far," Levi says, irritation seeping into his voice. "I'm not backing off when you're already this deep into the world. I told you that already."

"That doesn't make any sense," I murmur. "What do you lose by letting me stop? A dreamer to feed on?"

"You think that I care so little about life?" Levi withdrawals from me. "Just because I've let people get hurt before doesn't mean I want to make a habit out of it."

"You can't…" I falter. "You can't just decide to protect me. There has to be more of a reason behind it. People shouldn't just help me like that, it's such a burden."

"You think you're a burden?" Levi's irritation turns to alarm.

"No, that's not what I meant." I won't bring any more attention to it.

"Eren, you're not a burden," Levi says firmly.

I grit my teeth. "Yeah? Well I've certainly caused you enough trouble. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be locked up here. If I hadn't led you into that dead end, then we might not have been caught. Now we're down here, and who knows what those things are going to do to you?"

Levi's shoulder rises and fall again. "I told you, I want to protect life. Is it so wrong to want to atone for my sins?"

"That's such shit, Levi." I laugh a little. "Maybe you want to protect life, but atone for your sins? Sins are unatonable."

Levi groans. "Fuck, yes, you're right. You're right, Eren. Not about being a burden, but you're right about this much: There's another reason I'm helping you, okay? I want to keep you alive, but that's not my only motivation. However, I'm not going to tell you my other reason for helping you."

"Why not?" I demand.

"Because if I told you, I might get hurt."

My heart leaps in my throat. Damn. He's right – I don't want him hurt. I grit my teeth. "Are you sure you would get hurt?"

"I think that I could be hurt badly. It's a possibility, but I'm not going to risk it. I don't think it hurts you not to know. Try to figure it out by yourself, if you want."

"I'm going to find out," I vow. "And you're not getting hurt."

Levi chuckles darkly. "We'll see about that." I feel him fold his arms over his chest. "First, let's just focus on getting out of these tombs alive."


	7. Comrades

_No._

That thought again? What is it doing down here in the dark?

 _No._ No. Not here, not now! I reach out for Levi, but my hands close on air. My stomach drops, and my body lurches as I drop into free fall. My eyes snap open at the moment that I hit the ground with a silent, sickening thud.

The ceiling fan in my room must have been on through the night. The blades swing around the room in lazy loops, buffeting my hair with a cool breeze. The slight wind tosses Mikasa's hair around her face as she leans over me.

"Eren? I'm sorry to wake you up, but Jean's downstairs," She says softly. The look she always carries around me – smiling, but a bit ruefully – is plastered over her face. "I tried to tell him that you were asleep, and that he should come back later, but he says that it's really important. Do you have any idea what he's talking about?" I shake my head. I need to find my words, but I'm groggy and my brain is fuzz.

Mikasa frowns. "Well, come down soon. How much did you sleep?"

"What time is it?" I ask. _Does it matter? It's morning. You can't go back to Eden yet._

"About nine," Mikasa's smile brightens a little bit. "I'm amazed that Jean got out of bed this early. I remember him sleeping like the dead." Suddenly, Mikasa's eyes darken with worry. "Eren, be honest, is something wrong? You're crying again." She reaches down to brush my freezing cheek. Her fingertips come away damp.

"I'm okay," My voice comes out as a croak. Because I just woke up.

Mikasa bites her lip. "Eren, I understand that you're angry at me, but you have to let me help you. You're hurt enough as it is without shouldering everything by yourself."

I gape at her. "Stop saying stuff like that!" I sit up and drag her down into a monstrous bear hug. "The only person who thinks that I have a reason to be jealous of you is yourself. You can't help good genetics."

Mikasa squeezes me back. "Can you blame me?" Her voice is clear in my ear. "You're my little brother, and you're an idiot." Her grip on me tightens exponentially. "Dad and I are working as hard as we can to get everything back to normal." She says fiercely. "I think I found a professor who can help Dad. Just stay with us for a little longer." Mikasa breaks away and flashes me a tight smile. "I should go downstairs and make sure that Jean hasn't done anything stupid. I love you."

"I love you too."

After Mikasa leaves, I do a quick once-over of my body. The golden lily is still here. The metal Dreamkey is freezing my skin. My back aches, and I bet that it's another reminder from the other side. It probably happened when I landed in the skeleton's prison.

My stomach twists at the thought. Levi is still down there, in the dark, and I don't know when I'll be able to go see him. I sift through what Hange told me about the Dreamkey. Can I go to the Other Side during the day, now that I have it? I know that Hange said I could come to and from the Other Side at will, but does it only work at night? If she told me, I can't remember. Shit.

Jean's here, though, and I can't go to the Other Side when he needs to see me. I want to go, and badly – every particle in my body is aching for the dream world – but I try to squash the desire. Now isn't the time. It doesn't work. As hard as I try, I can't block the want – the need – to be on the Other Side. I grit my teeth. I'll just have to suck it up for a little while.

I quickly change into jeans and a hoodie, check to make sure that the tattoo is covered, and hurry downstairs. Jean looks up at the stairs when he hears me come down, and his face breaks into a crooked smile. "Hey, Jaeger. What took you so long?"

"Mikasa woke me up," I said loftily. "I had to talk to my sister." It's a terrible attempt at a jab, but the continuous chant of _Eden Eden Eden_ in the back of my head is distracting.

Jean rolls his eyes. "Yeah. Anyways, I have something to show you."

"What is it?" I grab an apple from the fruit bowl at the table and chomp into it. It looks like I missed breakfast, and I didn't even sleep in. I had to get woken up. The thought irks me a bit.

Jean hesitates. "It's a secret."

I lower the apple. "What kind of secret?"

He knows what I'm thinking. "Not the kind of secret that's going to hurt anyone." He assures me. "I just can't tell you until we get there. And you have to promise not to tell anyone where we're going and what you learn."

"What is it about?" I ask.

"Your disease." The response sends a bolt of shock through me. "It's about your FFI. I think there might be a way to help you, maybe even cure you."

Even before he brings up the cure, I'm in. The suggestion of a solution silences the need for Eden and any wariness I have all at once. "I promise. What are we waiting for? Let's go!"

Jean's car is parked next to Dad's in the driveway – and where is Dad? I haven't seen him this morning. I hope he's not at work. When we climb inside the car, I slide into the passenger's seat. I almost jump out of my skin when I see who's siting in the backseat.

"Eren!" Isabel hisses at me.

I glance at Jean. He's starting the car up, and he doesn't react to Isabel. I don't want him to think I'm crazy, so I don't answer her. I just make eye contact with her to let her know I'm listening.

"I know about what happened to Levi," She says quietly. How? Does she have some sixth sense? She wasn't with us when Levi got captured, and I don't know how she could have reached him to find out.

"You shouldn't worry about him," She continues. What does she think I'm going to do? Listen to that? Of course I'm worried about him.

"They're probably not going to punish him without you there, if they even come for him this morning," Isabel continues.

'Probably'.

"It's too early for the skeletons to be up, anyways," She adds.

That didn't stop the skeletons last night. They were awake when they shouldn't have been then, too. It's great to see Isabel again, but I'm not worrying about Levi any less.

"Hey man," Jean speaks up. "Are you okay? You're being really quiet."

I nod. "Yeah, I'm just thinking. Does anyone else know about what you're going to show me?" I hate to twist the truth, but it's not a total lie. This secret, which may or may not help me, is eating at my mind. What is it?

Jean tightens his grip on the steering wheel. "I can't tell you that right now."

"That basically means yes," I point out.

Jean groans. "You'll see when we get there." I settle back into my seat. Do I know the others? For all I know, Jean did something stupid and asked the wrong people for help. He's my best friend, and I wouldn't put it past him. I sigh inwardly. I trust Jean, but he's being cryptic as fuck. I wish I was the one driving. Mikasa and Dad don't usually let me, because it's hard to focus on the road when you haven't slept in seventy-two hours. How long has it been since the last time I was behind a steering wheel? I can't remember. I'll be behind one again soon. Maybe even sooner than I thought if this secret turns out to be a cure.

Like I said, Jean is cryptic as fuck. Our destination doesn't help. He parks us in front of an abandoned warehouse that looks like someone doused it in acid – the cinderblock is a mottled grey, and covered in peeling paint.

I peer at the building doubtfully. "Is this the right place?"

"This is it," Jean looks rigid in his seat. "Come on."

He exists the car and heads towards the entrance. I trail after him. Isabel slips out of the car and drifts after us. She barely touches the ground, skimming over the earth while her wings flutter gently. "I don't know what this is," She murmurs to me. "It's really wacky."

"Yeah, no kidding," My voice is barely loud enough to be a whisper. "Hey, how do you know about Levi?"

The question catches her off guard. Her eyes widen even more and all the color drains out of her face. "Well… he's my brother, you know? We can always tell when one of us is in danger. I know something happened, so I did a little snooping around, and I found out where he was. Then I just had to make some inferences. It's pretty obvious that you guys were together, since Levi wouldn't just go down to the catacombs. Since you weren't with him, I guessed that you had woken up."

"Really?"

Isabel bristles like a porcupine. "What, you think I would lie?"

I shake my head. "Never mind." I don't know what to think. He reasoning makes sense, but the explanation doesn't quite fit. Especially when she was so shocked by my question. From the way she reacted, it seemed like I had told her the world was ending. I'm so frustrated. First Levi, and now maybe – probably – Isabel. They're both keeping something from me. At the very least, I'm missing something here. Does it have something to do with what Levi told me? His other motivation? _"I'm not going to tell you my other reason for helping you. If I told you, I might get hurt."_ I'm going to find out anyways. No matter what.

The inside of the warehouse reeks of mold and dust. I can't help but imagine how horrified Levi would be if he saw how grimy this place is, and the thought makes me grin a little.

"I know what this looks like," Jean says, "but it will all make sense in a second, okay? I promise that this is a big deal."

When we reach the back of the warehouse, two other guys are waiting.

"Bertholdt? Reiner?" Bertholdt sits on an overturned box and Reiner leans against the back wall. "Can I please know what's going on here?"

Reiner shoots Jean a suspicious look. "Did you tell him anything?"

Jean shakes his head.

"This is going to sound too good to be true," Reiner warns, "but we think we found a cure for you."

Good? Definitely. My heart is pounding hard enough to smash my rib cage. Unreal? Not by a long shot. "Where?" I ask excitedly. I know I'm searching for a cure with Levi and Hange, but if there's a faster way to get one, I'll take it. Except that he and Hange have done so much work for me already. I would be a complete asshole if I blew them off for my other friends. Especially when Levi might be executed before I can find a way to get him out of the catacombs. Well, two cures are better than one. If the guys found a second medicine, that's great. I can use the one on the Other Side for myself, since honestly, I don't know if other people can use my dreams. The one the guys found can be a cure for more people, and the future.

"You might not believe us so easily," Bertholdt says. "We found the cure in a different dimension."

At those words, everything stops. My heart turns to stone and my blood freezes. The nagging call for Eden is cut off. Out of the corner of my eye, I've been watching Isabel perch on the rafters, swinging her legs over the side of the beams. At Jean's words, she halts.

Bertholdt misinterprets my shock. "It sounds insane, but there really is another dimension. Maybe a bunch of others, but we've only been to one."

"I had the same reaction," Jean agrees. "But it's true, Eren. It's incredible." His eyes shine. "There's another dimension where all of our dreams are alive."

"The way to the dream world is this tunnel," Jean describes, "which you can only reach by going through a nightclub. The tunnel has a walkway that's lit up. It's dark along the sides with some nasty shadow blobs. We poked one with a stick to see what would happen." Jean shudders. "The wood started to rot."

"Once you get to the other side of the tunnel," Reiner jumps in, "you're standing on a rocky plain that leads up to the edge of a cliff. The rock just drops off at the edge, and you're so high up that clouds cover your view of the ground."

"The one thing you can see is the moon," Bertholdt says. "It's so big that I thought it was touching us. I almost put my hand on it."

Some of our details are different – I saw the plains and they saw the cliff – but they went to the Other Side, all right. I open my mouth to tell them – I already know what they're talking about, I've been to the Other Side too – but the words are killed in my throat. My tattoo starts to burn, and a white-hot band wraps around my neck. I try to force the worlds out anyways, but the pain intensifies, and I feel like my throat is being crushed.

 _No._ The voice in the back of my head is back, but it's not nagging me anymore. _No, don't tell them. Don't share your dreams with them._

Why not? I grit my teeth. They're my friends. I trust them.

 _Really? I don't._

The response stops my heart. I wasn't trying to communicate. It was just a thought. I try to reach out to it. _Are you – hello?_

 _I'm right here._

A chill runs up my spine. _What are you?_

 _I'm a part of you. You're allowed to talk to myself, aren't you?_

The voice does sound like me, but it's a bit deeper. I want to laugh. I'm losing it, aren't I? I started to lose it last night, in the catacombs, and now I'm definitely tipping over the edge.

 _You're not crazy. I just didn't think I needed to intervene before now. Of course, you had to prove me wrong, didn't you?_

"Eren?" Jean takes my silence the wrong way. "Are you okay, man?"

"I – yeah, I'm fine. I just think…"

My tattoo prickles warningly, but I'm not keen to tempt it a second time. I'm just talking to an auditory hallucination.

I feel, rather than hear, the voice's sigh. It's like a gust of wind through my head, buffeting my thoughts. _Stop thinking things like that. I am not an enemy._

"…I think that this all sounds impossible." I say instead. The lie slips out easily, and I hate it. "A dream world? A magic nightclub?"

Bertholdt looks sheepish and Reiner disgruntled, but Jean clenches his jaw. "We're not crazy,"

"I didn't say you were, did I?" I say. "Of course, I want to see the dream world."

Bertholdt's face breaks into a grin. "You won't regret trusting us," Reiner promises. "If you come here tonight, we'll show you what real dreams look like."

That could be a problem. I have to go back to Levi tonight. I plaster on a smile. "Sure thing." I'll find a way to do both. Or cancel. I won't leave Levi alone.

Bertholdt and Reiner stay behind when Jean and I leave. When I ask him what they're doing by themselves in an abandoned warehouse. He just shakes his head. "I don't know half the stuff they do when they're alone together, and I wish I didn't know the other half."

When we clamber into the car, Isabel collapses in the back seat. "Wow," She breathes out. "I don't know what I was expecting back there, but it wasn't that." That makes two of us. "We'll talk when you get dropped off, okay? This could cause some problems."

"I know this must seem like a big shock," Jean says as he starts the car, "but I swear, we're not lying."

"I know," I assure him. "You guys wouldn't lie to me about a potential cure. Even you aren't that big of an asshole."

He snorts. "Gee, thanks."

"Seriously," I say, "thanks for telling me about the dream world."

Jean flashes me a genuine smile. "Yeah no problem. Reiner and Bertholdt are the ones who found the place first, though, so you have to thank them."

I frown. "Then how do you know about it?"

"They told me," He replies, "and they said that they thought you should know. Having a world filled with living dreams is a big deal, and it means that "impossible" goes out the window. We want to help you."

I'm touched. Sometimes I forget how many people are willing to look after me, and I focus too much on protecting them. The thought also fuels my determination. Jean, Reiner, and Bertholdt are another three people that I can't hurt. I won't let them down. I'm going to beat this disease for them.

Something under Jean's collar catches my eye – a faint, golden glimmer. "Hey, horseface," I say slowly, "what's that?"

Jean turns down the collar of his shirt. "Oh, yeah. I got this after coming back from the dream world. Weird, huh?"

A golden lily. Identical to mine. "Yeah. Are you trying to hide it?"

Jean shrugs. "I am for now, but I don't know how much longer I'll keep it hidden. It wouldn't be my choice for a tattoo, but it's not bad. I like it." He pauses. "Come to think of it, you'll get one too, once you go to the dream world tonight. Are you going to show your family?"

"No," I say immediately. "If they see it, they'll ask. I'm not going to lie to them if they confront me, and I don't want them to worry about where I go at night."

"If I were them, I would be glad that you found a potential cure."

"They would be." I bet the idea would make Mikasa smile, a real, wide smile that could outshine the sun. "I don't want them to get their hopes up. The dream world will give me a cure," I add quickly, "I don't doubt that. I just don't want them to put all their hopes on it and then loose them if it doesn't work out. There's always a what-if."

Jean nodded. "If that's what you want. I'm not saying anything, either."

"Thanks."

We pull into the driveway. "Don't mention it," Jean says.

I climb out of the car, and right before I'm about to walk up to the house, he rolls down the window and pops his head out. "By the way, Jaeger, tell your sister I said hi."

"In your dreams, horseface!" I shouted after him. I realized too late that the statement wasn't much of a deterrent. I probably will say that in his dreams.

Isabel and I run inside. Mikasa looks up from the kitchen table. "What did you guys do? Is everything alright?"

"Everything's fine," I assure her. "We just met up with Reiner and Bertholdt and hung out for a while. He wanted to ask me about when our next bio test was."

Mikasa furrows her brow. "Then he must be more serious about school than I thought. It seemed like he was really worried this morning."

I shrug. "Guess so." She doesn't buy it, and I don't want to be asked about it, so I hurry upstairs before an interrogation can begin in earnest. Once Isabel and I are in my room with the door locked, I groan. "I hate this. Lying to everybody. Hiding from them. As soon as everything is over and I have a cure, I'm going to tell them everything."

"You're going to have to," Isabel points out. "If you don't, they'll wonder why you stopped dying." She settles on my bed. "You don't have to hide anything, though. Anything you're covering up hidden because you want it to be, not because you need it to be."

"I know," I'm being selfish and unfair, and it's twisting my insides into knots. "but I can't watch them get hurt."

"What-ifs are powerful," She agrees quietly.

"About the guys," I move on, "how do they know where Eden is? How did they get to the Other Side without a dream?"

Isabel twists a rogue strand of hair around her finger. "Lots of dreamers go to Eden. You're not unique in that. And it makes sense that if you find something cool, you want to show your friends. The fact that all three of them know about and have visited the Other Side isn't unnatural or anything like that. You don't need a dream to visit the Other Side, either. Although," she contemplates, "unescorted dreamers on our side get harassed. From what I heard, I don't think they went far enough into our territory to meet a lot of dreams. They crossed the border between worlds, but they didn't get very far."

"They know about the dreams on the Other Side," I persist. "They had to meet one to know that."

"Maybe," Isabel agrees. "Or somebody told them beforehand. That would make more sense than them finding the Other Side on their own. If they had help, that might also explain why they aren't dead by now."

My blood runs cold. "What do you mean? Would someone try to hurt them?"

"Oh no, that's not what I meant." Isabel's eyes widen. "I don't know how long they were on the Other Side, but they clearly like the place. I don't think they just stuck their heads over the border for a few minutes and then left. They probably wanted to spend as much time on the Other Side as possible."

"The sun," It dawns on me in an instant. "They have to know not to stay past sunrise."

Isabel nods. "That's not a rule you figure out on your own."

If someone told them about Eden, who? And why wouldn't Jean tell me? Does he even know? Jean said that Reiner and Bertholdt were the ones who originally found Eden. If anyone was told about the club, it would be them.

But that still doesn't explain why they wouldn't say they were told.

"I have to go with them tonight," I decide. "I told them I would, and I want to see what happens. There are some people missing here." I clench my fists. "The problem is that I have to go back to Levi, too. If I don't, he could get hurt. He might already be, for all I know."

Isabel shakes her head. "You won't have time for both. I think that you should go with your friends." I open my mouth to protest, but she adds, "I'll go check on Levi and tell him what's happening." She looks at me sympathetically. "I know it's hardly ideal, but it's the best we can do. He'll understand, and he's more than capable of taking care of himself."

"Can you do that?" I ask warily. "He's locked up in the catacombs. How can you reach him?"

She waves my concern away. "I'll talk to the guards or break in. I'm not going to get hurt."

"Well… okay." I feel like a huge stone has been lifted off my chest. "Thanks, Izzy. That would be great. I owe you one."

She winks. "Nah, it's good. He is my big brother, you know. You don't have anything to worry about, Eren. He's tough stuff. The strongest dream in the world."


End file.
